Bobbie, General Manager/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
IT wasn't a week after that Sunday afternoon of ours on our darling hilltop that I received a letter from Ruth announcing her intention of paying me a visit. I was amazed.
Ruth usually prefers to visit at houses where she can stay in bed until ten o'clock in the morning and sink luxuriously into an upholstered limousine fitted up with plum-coloured cushions and a bunch of fresh flowers, every time she goes out of doors. She isn't the type who likes making her own bed and helping with the dishes—not that I require such toll from a guest; but you know our house has only one bathroom and Ruth says a tin tub always looks greasy. She says that black walnut furniture has a depressing effect on her, and assures me that she doesn't dare turn over in my guest-room bed for fear the head of the thing—a big towering mass of black walnut blocks and turrets—will fall down on top of her in the night. Ruth suffered the hardships of my establishment only when it was necessary. Whenever a taxicab did draw up to my door and deposit my dressy sister for the night, I knew that it was because she had an early appointment with her tailor the next morning, or had missed the last Hilton Express. I didn't remember that Ruth had ever spent a single night under my roof for the mere friendliness or sisterly love of sleeping between my embroidered sheets. Ruth has a very sensitive temperament—so sensitive that certain combinations of colour will affect her spirits. My guest-room has mustard-coloured walls with reddish fleur-de-lis.
Ruth is an extraordinary girl. She doesn't seem a bit like a Vars. We're such a conventional and just-what-you-would-expect kind of family. Ruth contrives somehow to shroud herself in a veil of mystery and create an impression everywhere she goes. I guess she's the most discussed girl in all Hilton. She affects heliotrope shades in her clothes, combining several tones in one gown, and wears large, round, floppy hats. She always manages to select big stagy chairs to sit in, that set her off as if she were a portrait. I have to pinch myself every once in a while to make sure she isn't a foreign adventuress of some kind with an exciting past, instead of just my common ordinary little sister Ruthie. She has the queerest ideas on life and love that I ever heard talked outside of a book, and she preaches them too. I don't know how she dares; but somehow a little wickedness, a little cynicism, from so very pretty a girl seems simply to add to her piquancy and charm. Ruth dabbles in every artistic line that exists—sings with the finish of a prima-donna and loves to improvise by the hour on the big drawing-room piano at home, while some love-lorn suitor sits in silence in the half-dark and worships. She's clever at drawing—has designed book-plates for all her friends, besides having modelled in bas-relief several of their portraits in clay. She writes poetry too. She never read any of it to me; I suppose I'm not sympathetic enough for it; but I got hold of some of her papers once and spent a whole hour with them. I never knew till then what deep ideas Ruth really has! I copied several of the verses and Bob Jennings, who is an instructor in English at the university down here, said they were "full of promise."
When Ruth's letter arrived announcing her proposed visit, my only sorrow lay in the fact that her room in the new house wasn't ready. I was going to have it papered in lavender chambray and had already selected a wisteria design in cretonne for the hangings. It was going to be the most artistic room in the house. I wasn't going to hang a single picture on the walls (no pictures is Ruth's latest fad) and the furniture was going to be plain colonial mahogany. It's queer how all the family pay homage to Ruth. She's younger than I, by three years, but I've always longed for her approval. I used to criticise her extravagance, and tell her she was vain and selfish, but down in the bottom of my heart I've always thought Ruth was wonderful. Will makes fun of me for laying out my best linen every time Ruth comes to see us. It is foolish, but I don't want Ruth to think that I don't possess any of the fine points of the people she most admires. I began to plan to make her first real visit with me as much of a success as I knew how. Ruth likes to have parties planned ahead for her, so I decided to invite the Van Breezes to dinner one night, and Bob Jennings another.
Bob is a perfectly splendid young man and awfully good-looking. I was sorry that Ruth had to meet him for the first time in the unkind surroundings of our house. Setting, background, atmosphere, influence her so much. If she sees a man for the first time in company with black walnut and marble-topped tables, she is apt to think him as offensively old-fashioned as the furniture. And I did want to prove to Ruth that there existed a decent man with several degrees to his name, who knew how to dress properly for dinner and converse intelligently on the latest opera.
Will and I both met Ruth at the station when she arrived. She kissed me and gave both her hands to Will in her most engaging manner. She presented him later with three trunk checks. I was flattered. I was glad that there happened to be several teas on hand, and a musicale at the Omsted's that week. I would show Ruth that all our friends didn't live in ugly brown French-roofed houses, and that she hadn't brought all her pretty gowns to my house in vain.
But here I was disappointed. After dinner Ruth announced, "Oh, no; I couldn't. Don't make any engagements for me, please. My time won't be my own while I'm here. I didn't mention in my letter that Breck Sewall is coming up from New York to-morrow. He has invited me to several things in town. I thought it would be simpler for me to spend my nights here, than to go back so many times to Hilton."
I didn't say a word, but my heart skipped a beat, I think. I had thought the affair with Breck Sewall had blown over. The Sewalls haven't occupied their summer place near Hilton for three years. It hadn't occurred to me that Ruth's visit could have any possible connection with Breck Sewall. Ruth knew that Will and I disapprove of him; she knew the sound of his very name was unwelcome in our house. I felt like telling Ruth to go upstairs, lock up her precious trunks, and go home. Once I would have spat out something nasty to my sister about accepting attentions from a man she knew was not nice, but now I was too anxious to become her friend to quarrel with her on the first night she arrived. I had learned that the safest course for me to follow was simply not to oppose Ruth in anything.
It was Will, turning from fastening the windows, who blurted out bluntly, "Are you still keeping up your connections with that man?"
Ruth smiled, raising her eyebrows a little, and then folded her hands behind her head, her pretty arms bare to the elbows.
"Don't you approve of him, brother William?" she inquired archly as if she didn't care a straw whether he did or not.
"Do you?" asked Will.
Ruth laughed an amused, silvery laugh and replied lightly, "I am engaged to be married to Breck Sewall, I suppose, if that answers you."
Will didn't say a word for a minute. Then, "I am sorry to hear that," he replied shortly.
"Really?" smiled Ruth. "Breck and I shall certainly miss your blessing, William." She always calls him William when she's making fun of him. I don't see how she dares to mock a man so much wiser and older than she, but Ruth would deride the President of the United States if he interfered with her little schemes.
Will replied; "You're too fine a girl to make such a mistake, Ruth."
She rippled into another laugh and my cheeks grew warm with indignation. She leaned forward and selected a chocolate-cream from a box of candy on the table.
"That's a very prettily veiled compliment, William, and I thank you," she said. She nibbled a bit of her candy as she spoke.
She was awfully exasperating, sitting there so gay and unconcerned. Will stepped up to her chair and I could tell from his voice that he was angry.
"I know all about Breck Sewall," he said. "He's not the kind of man for any nice girl to associate with. He spent a year at this university. He was expelled, not only because he could not keep up in his courses, not only because he was brought home time and time again too disgustingly drunk to stand alone, not only because of these things, but because of another and more disreputable affair. I think you ought to know about it before this goes any further. It was an affair with a girl. There was no doubt about it. He acknowledged the whole thing. Why, Ruth, he isn't the kind of man for you even to speak to!" Will said. "Sometime I will tell you the whole story—sometime—if it's necessary."
Ruth took another bite of her chocolate-cream.
"Do now," she smiled, "if it amuses you. But it will be no news to me. I know all about that college affair of Breck's. He has told me the whole story himself. I know the girl's name and all the particulars. Breck isn't afraid to tell me the truth. Nothing in the world shocks me, you know," she announced with bravado. "Did you think I was so narrow-minded and hemmed in by prejudice not to overlook the follies a man may have committed when he was hardly more than a boy? I don't care what Breck did before he knew me. What other awful news have you to break to me, William?" Ruth inquired sweetly.
Will stared at Ruth as if she were something he never knew existed.
"Nothing else," he said shortly, "if that isn't sufficient."
There was an uncomfortable silence. My sister must have felt a little uneasy under the gaze of Will's astonished eyes; for when she had finished her candy, daintily touched her lips with her bit of a white handkerchief, tucked it away, and spoke again, her manner towards him had changed.
"Will," she said, "I'm so different from any one you ever knew that you can't understand me, can you? Now I know you told me just now about that little unfortunate affair of Breck's because you want me to be happy. And I do appreciate your interest in me—I do really. Of course I have no mother," she put in quite tragically; "I never had. Perhaps that is why I am so different from other girls. I'm not shocked at the things young girls are brought up to be shocked at. I don't tremble at the sound of unadulterated truth and bare facts. I am aware of it. I am not living under the false illusion that the man I am to marry is perfect. I know he isn't, and I am content. Why, the very qualities I require in a man preclude at least a few of the supposed virtues. Perhaps, Will," said Ruth patronisingly, "you do not understand a man of Breck's tempestuous nature. You're so scientific. It's easy for you to stay within the narrow path. But you shouldn't be severe on others."
"Do you love Breck Sewall?" asked Will point-blank.
"Oh, love!" Ruth shrugged her shoulders. "Love would be the last thing I would marry a man for. I'm not as short-sighted as that. Love may last a year, or two perhaps, but it is not enduring. I marry for sounder reasons than love. You must know that the Sewalls are immensely wealthy. Their position is as established as royalty in England. Oh, you see," laughed Ruth, standing up and walking over toward the bookcase, "how dreadfully worldly and wicked I am! Have you La Rochefoucauld? Let me read you a little saying of his."
"No, not dreadfully worldly—not dreadfully wicked, Ruth," said Will; "only dreadfully young, I think."
Ruth hates to be accused of youth.
"But old enough to marry whom I please, William, perhaps," she flashed.
"Oh," scoffed Will, "that doesn't require much age, nor much wisdom. You are young enough to think it rather clever and smart to scorn virtue, make fun of love, and pretend to marry a man for his wealth and position. It sounds so bookish and so sophisticated!"
Ruth would not have deigned to respond to such an insulting assault as that if I had made it, but to Will she replied, "You're mistaken there. I've thought and read on this subject. I'm not so young as you think." She walked over to the mantel and leaned her back against the white marble, then folding her arms across her chest, like a judging goddess, she continued: "I believe, and several people of reputation agree with me, that the most important thing to consult in considering marriage is one's temperament. Ask yourself what your tastes are and then see if the new life will gratify them. Temperament never changes. If you love music when you are twenty, you will love it when you are forty. Well, I have studied my nature very closely. I know what pleases it. I know what annoys and disturbs it. I'm different from the others in our family. I often wonder from whom I inherit my peculiarities. I love beautiful music, beautiful pictures, soft rugs, fine furniture, delicate lace at the windows. Low, artistic lamp-light, the comings and goings of soft-footed unobtrusive servants, a dinner perfectly served, exquisite china, old silver, exclusive people—all such things give me actual physical pleasure. I enjoy position and influence. My nature grows and expands under recognition. It dries up and dies under slight and disregard. The people I envy most in the world are those who are born in high positions. I can't alter my birth, but I have been invited to become a member of a prominent and influential family, and as one of that family I shall be invited and received everywhere, without any of the humiliating striving. I'm proud, you know. I despise toadying. I don't want to work for social position. I want it placed upon me, like a king his crown. Why, Will, Breck Sewall can supply my nature with everything it demands. Why shouldn't I marry him?"
"Can Breck supply your intellect with what it demands?" asked Will.
Ruth laughed good-naturedly.
"Poor Breck! Poor old maligned Breck! He isn't exactly intellectual, I agree, but don't you worry, Will, I shall find congenial minds enough in his circle. The Sewalls entertain all sorts of interesting professional people—the top-notchers, I mean. My intellect won't suffer. Where is the woman, anyhow, who discusses her soul with her husband? How can a woman read poetry with a man who has just been grumbling at the price of her prettiest gown?" Ruth shuddered. "No, no! Please! I prefer not. But I shan't be lonely. Never fear." She gave Will a meaning look from beneath her eyebrows and added in a sort of bold, daring way, "There will be some one."
I don't know why Ruth loves to preach such wickedness. She doesn't mean half she says. I waited for the walls to fall. Will abhors married women who attempt to flirt with other men. Ruth waited too for the clap of thunder she thought must follow her startling implication. But when Will spoke there wasn't a trace of anger in his voice—just disgust—just plain unflattering disgust. "Come, Lucy," he said to me; "I've had about enough of this. Let's go upstairs to bed."
The Sewalls are the high-muck-a-mucks of the Hilton summer colony. They're New York people and their place, just outside Hilton, reminds me of the castles that give distinction to so many otherwise nondescript little towns in Europe—not in age, for I can remember when the Sewalls' place was rough cow-pasture land, but in its relation to the town and the surrounding country. It's Hilton's show-place. We always point it out to strangers when we take them on their first drive. The wrought-iron gates cost five thousand dollars; the distance around the house and adjoining buildings added together measures half a mile; the big entrance hall, we state (and we're proud of our knowledge too) is hung with old tapestries and furnished in carved English oak.
After Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall's advent, there was established among the Hilton summer colonists a new law of society. You were either of the elect or of the rejected; you were either entertained by Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall or you were an ignominious nobody. There existed no self-respecting middle position in Hilton after Mrs. Sewall arrived in mid-July with her retinue of some twenty-odd servants, her four or five automobiles, and half-dozen hunters. Mrs. Sewall was for some time a very disturbing factor in Edith's life. The lights of a ballroom, the sound of dance-music, however lovely they may be, are absolutely irritating to my sister-in-law, if seen and heard from the outside. It took two long discouraging seasons of scheming, manipulating, and rather bold attacking, before Edith gained the proper kind of entrance to the hallowed ground inside those five-thousand-dollar wrought-iron gates. It was really due to Ruth that she was admitted then. Young Breckenridge Sewall had chanced to see a stunning young creature in lavender and grey at a garden-party at Mrs. Leonard Jackson's, one afternoon late in August, during his mother's second season at Grassmere, the name of their place in Hilton. He had only to see Ruth once to beg for an introduction. That is the way it is with every man across whose field of vision my sister steps. I think that Ruth is the loveliest production that Hilton, or Hilton's environs, ever produced; and Breckenridge Sewall thought so too. Three weeks after that introduction at Mrs. Leonard Jackson's Ruth rushed in upon Edith one Friday noon and announced, "I'm invited to a house-party at the Sewalls'! One of the out-of-town guests has disappointed Mrs. Sewall at the last moment and Breck wants me to fill in!" Before the Sewalls went back to New York that fall, Ruth was the most distinguished young lady in all Hilton. She was pointed out everywhere she went as the girl to whom Breck Sewall was paying such marked attention; she burst into notoriety; and Edith's position was at last made secure. Trust Edith to squeeze into the limelight along with Ruth. I don't know how my sister-in-law manages such things but it was clear sailing for her after Breck's discovery.
That man rushed Ruth for two years and a half before there was any word from my sister about an engagement. During the summer he used to call on Ruth about six evenings a week, and as Edith made us all go upstairs (this was before I was married) on the nights that Breck came, by nine o'clock, it got to be a nuisance. At first I remember we were all a little flattered by the young millionaire's attention to our pretty Ruth and even I used to feel a thrill of pride at the thought of such a brilliant match in our quiet midst.
Breck didn't propose to Ruth till after I was married. She came in from a long motor run one Sunday in July, when Will and I happened to be in Hilton, and told us the news before she even took off her hat. I remember it very well for there followed one of our dreadful family discussions. By that time Will and I, and Alec too, had begun to feel a little doubt as to Breck's desirability. We had always heard rumours about his habits, but Edith prized Breck's attentions to Ruth so highly, that Alec had neglected a thorough investigation. He thought that Breck didn't intend to marry Ruth anyway, called it a summer affair and trusted that time would cure them both of their fancy. So when Will came out with a few telling facts detrimental to Breck Sewall's character, Edith was simply furious. She told me that I shouldn't come back meddling after I was married. Ruth loved Breck Sewall—she was sure of it; we might be the cause of wrecking the child's happiness for life if we interfered. Alec looked awfully distressed as we talked but he didn't rise up in indignation, stampede as he should have, and swear that no sister of his should ever marry a man with Breck Sewall's reputation, so long as he lived. Alec is awfully ineffectual when Edith is around.
I don't know how it all would have come out, if Mrs. Sewall hadn't interrupted matters. Suddenly, right in the midst of the thickest of our discussion, three or four days after Ruth's announcement, Mrs. Sewall decided to go abroad. She closed up her summer mansion, mid-season though it was, barred the windows, locked the gates, and sailed away to Europe, Breck and all. She didn't come back for two years, and even then she didn't come back to Hilton. The excitement about Breck and Ruth died down like fire, and about as suddenly. He didn't even write to Ruth after three or four months, and just before Ruth came down to visit me and announced her startling piece of news, I had read that Breckenridge Sewall was reported engaged to his cousin, Miss Gale somebody or other, a débutante of last season.
Ruth's news was an awful shock to me. I knew without being told how jubilant Edith would be, how helpless Alec in the face of what seemed to both the women of his household such a brilliant victory. I didn't know what to do. It didn't seem as if I could stand by and watch my own sister marry the kind of man Will said that Breck Sewall was. I lay awake a long while that night after Ruth's arrival at our house, wondering what under heaven I, whose ideas on life my sister considered so provincial—what there was that I might do to swerve her from her purpose.
I could hope for no help from Will. Ruth had thrown him utterly out of sympathy with her. He washed his hands of the whole affair; he told me so that night when we came upstairs to bed, and I knew by his manner to my sister the next morning at breakfast, courteous enough though it was, in what contempt he held her. I told Will I couldn't send Ruth back to Hilton, and, as distasteful as I knew Breck Sewall's coming to our door would be to him, I hoped he would let me keep Ruth with me as long as she would stay. I didn't have any plan, any deep-laid scheme. It simply seemed to me that it must have been an act of heaven that Ruth had been sent to me during such a critical period in her history, and I didn't want to fly in the face of Providence.
I began by being just as nice and kind to her as I knew how. I didn't offer one word of opposition; I didn't advise; I didn't criticise; I appeared even to welcome her suitor when he first arrived to carry my sister in town to dinner and the theatre; I chatted with him pleasantly while she put on her party coat upstairs. I served Ruth breakfasts in bed at eleven A. M.; and admired and praised all her gowns and lovely fol-de-rols as she dressed every afternoon in preparation for her lover.
For five days Ruth blandly carried on her love-affair in our house, going and coming at her own sweet time, accepting our hospitality as a matter of course, while she bestowed her rarest smiles upon a man whom she knew Will considered disreputable and whom therefore I could not approve of. For five days she lunched, motored, and dined with Breck Sewall, and in between times talked with him over the 'phone for twenty-minute periods. I despaired. I didn't see any way out, and as the days went on and the house became more and more perfumed by Breck Sewall's roses and violets and valley-lilies, I began to give up hope.
On the sixth day I received a letter from Edith:
"Ruth would go down to you. I told her that neither you nor Will liked Breck Sewall and it wouldn't be a bit pleasant. Alec and I are both very much pleased about the engagement, because Ruth really loves Breck Sewall with all her heart, and since his renewed attentions, the dear girl has been simply radiant. I write this because I'm afraid that you'll try to poison Ruth's mind against the man she loves. We all want her to be happy, I'm sure, and I think you would assume a lot of responsibility in trying to stop a girl from marrying the only man she ever has cared for or ever will. She likes to boast that she doesn't love Breck. It's pose. I, who have been with Ruth so intimately for so long, know she is wild about Breck Sewall, and loves him madly. Don't meddle with it, Bobbie. I'd hate to be to blame for my sister's broken heart."
That letter of Edith's set me to thinking. It hadn't occurred to me that Ruth was simply pretending to marry for position. I didn't think that such a repulsive creature as Breck Sewall could inspire anything so divine as love in my sister's heart. And yet, perhaps—how did I know (I understand Ruth so little anyway)—how did I know—perhaps Edith was right. Perhaps, after all, Ruth was simply trying to conceal her love by contempt and scorn of it. It wouldn't have made any difference as to my opposition, but it would have cleared Ruth of unworthy motives, at any rate. I was determined to find out.
She had told me when she left the house at three that afternoon that she and Breck were going to motor to somebody's place on the north shore and would not be back until late in the evening. It was eleven-thirty when I finally heard Breck Sewall fumbling with the lock and a minute later I caught the odour of his cigarette, as I lay waiting for it in bed. I knew then that he and Ruth were established in the living-room for their usual half-hour alone before he bade her good-night. I don't suppose it was a very honourable thing to do, but after about five minutes I got up, put on a wrapper, and crawled quietly down to the landing, stepping over the third step which creaks awfully. It was pitch dark in the corner near the wall; there was no danger of being seen from below; and I stood perfectly still, eavesdropping for all I was worth. Ruth had lit one dim burner by the piano and from my balcony I could plainly see Breck Sewall, low as the light was, ensconced in a corner of our davenport-sofa.