The Bond/Part 4/Chapter 6

by Neith Boyce

 

VI

SOME days later Mrs. Perry came to see her—greeted her without affectation of cordiality, with a square, straight look in the eyes, and said:

"I've just found out you were here. I live near by, you know."

"Yes, I know," said Teresa, perfectly at her ease.

"I have a good many people coming down to see me. Perhaps you would both come to dine some night."

"I think so—with pleasure."

"Do you like it here? Shall you stay long?"

"I don't know how long. Basil finds he can work well here. I'm sorry he happens to be in town to-day."

"Perhaps you would come on Sunday to dinner? Eight o'clock. I don't know that it will be very amusing for you—it isn't for me."

And Isabel smiled listlessly. She had changed much in the year past. She was much quieter. She sat quiet in her chair, and her long hands lay quiet in her lap. She was pale, and looked ten years older than when Teresa had seen her last. She was plainly dressed in black, had left off all her jewels, and all the restless, nervous animation of her former manner had gone, with the glitter of the diamonds of which she had been so fond.

Teresa watched her curiously, while they chatted about Alice Blackley and various people they knew in common. She was surprised to find that the sight of Isabel moved her so little. She thought of the emotions Isabel had cost her, almost with a smile. All that seemed far away—since then she had travelled far. She could look at the other woman quite calmly, and realise impersonally her interest. Isabel was a person, one could not deny that—and much more a person now than she had been a year before. Some experience that meant a good deal to her had intervened. Teresa found herself wondering what it was. She felt she might risk a question or two. Whatever Isabel might have been once, she now plainly had herself well in hand. She could carry off a rather difficult situation, like the present, without a fault of taste. There was no danger of any scene. They understood one another. Isabel was honest—she had made no attempt to put things on a false basis. Things, as they stood, were tacitly taken for granted, that was all. And, as they talked about indifferent matters, simply, without constraint, they were approaching one another: not sentimentally or with any impulse toward embarrassing confidences, but with the feeling of one definite personality for another, with a certain pleasure in this non-hostile contact.

"Have you been ill?" Teresa asked finally.

"Nervous prostration, I believe it was," Isabel answered sceptically. "I'm supposed to be still having it, whatever it is. It is rather pleasant now. It's simply a disinclination to do any mortal thing, and I like that. After nearly forty years of activity for its own sake, it's pleasant not to want to do anything, and to have a headache at the back of your neck if you try to do anything."

"But Alice said you were seeing a lot of people."

"Oh, just seeing them. One needn't talk, you know. They come and dine and gamble. Sometimes I don't even appear. If they didn't come I should be trying to read or something. As it is, I watch them, and enjoy my own decay. … Well, then you'll come on Sunday? I shall send a motor over for you. You can't drive in these country cabs—you'd freeze to death. May I see the boy?"

Ronald was brought in, and envisaged the lady with his cool but not unfriendly gaze. They entered upon the subject of automobiles, or "Wongs," as Ronald called them; and finding that the lady was the possessor of the splendid red Wong now waiting outside the gate, Ronald warmed up, asked for a ride, and departed cheerfully in company with the stranger.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

Basil, when informed of the dinner-engagement, looked blankly at Teresa.

"You said we'd go? You might have asked me first. I don't want to go, and I don't think I shall. What have we to do with that crowd?"

Teresa's reply was less cold because of the "we."

"I think perhaps we ought to go once. It would be rather awkward not to go at all, after her visit."

Basil was plainly disconcerted. He looked at Teresa with astonishment not quite sufficiently veiled by indifference.

"You can call on her if you like. I can't see why I should go."

"It would be mere politeness to do so, I should think."

"Should you? I'm not going in for mere politeness."

"Well, there's no need for going in for bear-like savagery. I should think you'd hibernated long enough."

"I supose you're bored and want to see some men. But if we go there we shall lose a lot more money than we can afford, at bridge."

"We needn't go again. But I think she'd feel cut if we didn't, this once. She was rather nice to-day—I liked her."

Basil dropped the talk abruptly there, but Teresa felt that her wish would prevail, and it did. And this gave her a pleasure which seemed to herself pathetic and almost humiliating.

She dressed on the night of the dinner with extraordinary care. She had chosen a mauve dress with touches of silver, which brought out the colour of her eyes. It was a French dress, of rather an extreme fashion; and she followed out the same note of exaggeration in the way she did her hair, making its natural mass appear more strikingly, just as her slight and supple figure was shown to the greatest advantage. Usually she was content to leave her good points more or less to make their own effect, simply; but on this evening her appearance had the touch of obvious art. It would not have been more obvious if she had put rouge on her cheeks. She preferred to look pale; and her pallor was as intense and striking as the rouge would have been.

She came down from her room ready cloaked and hooded, and Basil did not see her otherwise till she entered Mrs. Perry's drawing-room, where a dozen people were assembled. Teresa was aware on her entry that she was frankly stared at, and that Basil was, for a moment, staring too. Among the guests were several that she knew—the Kerrs, Alice Blackley, and Fairfax. Isabel Perry made a simple and rather majestic figure in black velvet, which had seen several seasons, with her hair quite carelessly done. Simplicity was decidedly her note now, a perfectly genuine one, and there was a certain air of the great lady about her. As she had said to Teresa, she made no effort for her guests. They seemed to have been asked because they could amuse themselves.

Isabel's husband, as usual, was not present, and Teresa found herself at table between Fairfax and a tall, blonde, very handsome youth of the smartest aspect. She saw that Basil sat at his hostess' left hand, and that Isabel talked impartially to him and to the dull Mr. Kerr on her right. Isabel's Spanish eyes looked sad, and seemed to explore remote horizons. Basil also looked remote, and Teresa noted that he drank steadily each wine in succession, even champagne, which he did not like.

There were more men than women in the party, and Teresa soon found that she had an audience of four and that she was talking with animation. She would not let Fairfax absorb her attention, and his frankly amorous manner interested her less than the ingenuous remarks of the blonde youth, who openly admired her also and told her why. He had evidently been drinking a little too much, but his exuberance amused her.

"I can't stand sly-looking women," he confided to her. "And I can't stand the bread-and-butter sort either. I like women who have a spice of the devil in them, you know, and yet look good, too. Women who've seen the world and all the kingdoms thereof. And they needn't be too young, either. I admire them most about your age. I don't mean you're not young. Why, you might be eighteen, hang it—I beg your pardon—but what I mean is, there's experience in your face. I like experience. I never care to talk to a young girl—they've got no ideas of their own. And I don't like women that pretend to know it all, either—like Mrs. Blackley. She's so awfully knowing. I don't like that dress she's got on—it's affected. I hate those Empire things—they're only suitable for teagowns—and I hate women wearing artificial flowers and things in their hair."

"You're rather hard to please, it seems to me," said Teresa.

"Well, I know what I like, and why shouldn't I? I like your dress—it's a lovely colour, and that silver embroidery on the chiffon is beautiful. Do you live in New York?"

"No, I live out here in the country. My husband is a painter—there he is up at the end of the table. I have one child and we live on four thousand a year."

"How—how clever of you," stammered the boy. Teresa smiled sweetly on him and turned back to the others. There was no talk that interested her, but under her boredom she was conscious of a kind of excitement. It was pleasant after all—to be among people again, to be admired, to have a certain feeling of lightness. She was frivolous in her talk with Fairfax, and sharp when he tried to be serious.

"I wish I knew what has happened to you," he murmured at last, exasperatedly. "We were friends once, you know. And you have changed completely—not only to me, but your very looks have changed. The lines of your face are sharper and harder——"

"Age, of course," interposed Teresa, "but it isn't gallant of you to point it out. And to-night, too, when I really tried hard to make myself presentable."

"You are beautiful to-night, and you know it. What I mean has nothing to do with that. It's a spiritual hardness and sharpness—it's as though your face had been worked over, re-modelled——"

"Massage, perhaps? No, I don't go in for any of those beautifying processes."

Fairfax stifled an angry ejaculation.

"Well, so be it," he said, and his rather sensual face showed a dark flush. "I see you don't want to talk to me as you did once. I don't know that I'm given you any reason to snub me, but if it amuses you——"

"No, it doesn't, Jack," said Teresa, with sudden feeling—partly regret at having hurt whatever feeling he had, partly fear lest something ugly in him should revenge that former friendship he spoke of. "I don't want to snub you. But I am changed, that's true. And the reason is, I'm unhappy. Now, for Heaven's sake, don't say another word."

"I beg your pardon," he said in a low voice. In his startled, grave look she saw this time genuine feeling. He was silent, while Teresa plunged back into chatter with her younger neighbours. At the end of the dinner, amid the brilliant disorder of the dessert, with the women leaning their bare elbows on the table and most of them talking loud, Fairfax leaned toward the laughing Teresa and said:

"I say, if you ever want anything or anybody, you know, I'm at your service, and anything I've got."

She nodded, barely looking at him, as the women left the table. His words sent a cold shiver over her. That it could be supposed possible that she should need a service from Fairfax! What did he imagine? Why had she said that to him—that she was unhappy? Need the world know it, if she was? Were people to comment on her inmost life—was her soul to go in rags before them? "Have you heard? The Ransomes have separated! I thought it couldn't last! He was rather gay, you know—and she——?" Her pride flamed up, and anger against herself, for that betrayal to Fairfax.

In the drawing-room Alice Blackley began to talk to her in a high key of frivolity, but to Teresa's relief a message was brought in by a servant: Would Mrs. Blackley go to the library for a few moments and see Mr. Perry? Alice swept out with a conscious smile. Teresa knew this little custom of the dyspeptic and semi-invisible host; he liked to chat occasionally with someone who amused him.

When the men came in, bridge began. Teresa's partner was the blonde youth, who played extremely well, and she won nearly forty dollars. She was watchful of herself now, self-possessed and coolly gay.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

Her high spirits left her suddenly when she and Basil got into the motor for their homeward ride. She was silent, muffled in her furs. Something of her old feeling about Isabel had come up again, and the fact that she was riding in Isabel's motor irritated her. A mere nothing had reillumined that feeling—she had seen Basil and Isabel look at one another, and in that look she seemed to see their past intimacy. It was nothing, for Basil could not very well altogether avoid looking at Isabel. There had been no ardour in that glance, certainly, but there had been, or so Teresa fancied, an equally unavoidable recognition. Now she passionately regretted having insisted on going.

"Did you enjoy it?" asked Basil coolly.

"No! … Why, did you?"

"Certainly not. I was bored to tears—but I expected to be. I thought you seemed to be amusing yourself."

"I wasn't, though."

"At any rate, you were amusing Fairfax and some of those college boys. And I haven't seen you look as gay for weeks. Why don't you admit that you enjoyed your flirtations?"

Basil had become aggressive and rather excited.

"Don't talk nonsense," said Teresa wearily.

"Nonsense, is it? Why, you were got up so that no man in the room could help looking at you. I never saw you dressed that way before. I thought it rather bad form."

"I daresay you prefer Mrs. Perry's form. I thought you looked at her appreciatively."

"You thought nothing of the sort. I don't know what you call the way Fairfax looked at you. It was indecent."

"Was it? How interesting. I didn't observe it."

"Then you were the only person in the room who didn't. You mean you liked it, I suppose. Of course, you can get plenty of that sort of thing, if you like it. You're beautiful, and you can have all sorts of men after you if you look and behave as you did to-night."

"Be quiet, Basil," said Teresa dully.

"Why should I be quiet? Why shouldn't I admire you, too? You were beautiful—you took my breath away when you came into the room …"

The automobile stopped. They were at home. Basil helped Teresa out, stopped to tip the chauffeur, and hurried into the house. He came into Teresa's room, where she stood in the middle of the floor, staring at the fire, which was almost out.

"Why don't you have them keep your room warmer?" he asked sharply. "You'll freeze here—why hasn't somebody stayed up to look after the fire? I'll ring."

"No, don't—they've gone to bed. It doesn't matter."

"Well, it does."

Basil threw off his coat and vigorously made up the fire. Teresa emerged from her furs and sat down before it.

"Keep your wraps on till the place gets warm, why don't you? You've got nothing on."

"I don't feel it," she said indifferently.

Basil looked at her, shivered slightly—looked away—looked at her again. He took her coat and put it about her.

"I wish you'd take some care of yourself—you look ill, and apparently you're trying to be ill."

"I thought you said I looked well," said Teresa, still staring at the mounting flames.

"I said you looked beautiful …"

He bent down and touched her arm, kissed it, and suddenly clasped her in a fierce embrace.

Teresa pushed him away and got up.

"Don't do that," she said under her breath.

She stood looking at him, her body tense, her eyes shining like steel under half-lowered lids.

"Don't you—don't you care for me any more?" he stammered.

"I hate you!"

He waited a moment, then turned toward the door.

But to see him go, like that, to feel that silence shut down upon her again! No—at any price, on any terms, not that! She called him, and her voice was almost a shriek. She ran to him and threw herself into his arms.