The City of Masks/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE SCION OF A NEW YORK HOUSE
AS Miss Emsdale and Thomas Trotter got down from the taxi, into a huge unbroken snowdrift in front of a house in one of the cross-town streets just off upper Fifth Avenue, a second taxi drew up behind them and barked a raucous command to pull up out of the way. But the first taxi was unable to do anything of the sort, being temporarily though explosively stalled in the drift along the curb. Whereupon the fare in the second taxi threw open the door and, with an audible imprecation, plunged into the drift, just in time to witness the interesting spectacle of a lady being borne across the snow-piled sidewalk in the arms of a stalwart man; and, as he gazed in amazement, the man and his burden ascended the half-dozen steps leading to the storm-vestibule of the very house to which he himself was bound.
His first shock of apprehension was dissipated almost instantly. The man's burden giggled quite audibly as he set her down inside the storm doors. That giggle was proof positive that she was neither dead nor injured. She was very much alive, there could be no doubt about it. But who was she?
The newcomer swore softly as he fumbled in his trousers' pocket for a coin for the driver who had run him up from the club. After an exasperating but seemingly necessary delay he hurried up the steps. He met the stalwart burden-bearer coming down. A servant had opened the door and the late burden was passing into the hall.
He peered sharply into the face of the man who was leaving, and recognized him.
"Hello," he said. "Some one ill, Trotter?"
"No, Mr. Smith-Parvis," replied Trotter in some confusion. "Disagreeable night, isn't it?"
"In some respects," said young Mr. Smith-Parvis, and dashed into the vestibule before the footman could close the door.
Miss Emsdale turned at the foot of the broad stairway as she heard the servant greet the young master. A swift flush mounted to her cheeks. Her heart beat a little faster, notwithstanding the fact that it had been beating with unusual rapidity ever since Thomas Trotter disregarded her protests and picked her up in his strong arms.
"Hello," he said, lowering his voice.
There was a light in the library beyond. His father was there, taking advantage, no doubt, of the midnight lull to read the evening newspapers. The social activities of the Smith-Parvises gave him but little opportunity to read the evening papers prior to the appearance of the morning papers.
"What is the bally rush?" went on the young man, slipping out of his fur-lined overcoat and leaving it pendant in the hands of the footman. Miss Emsdale, after responding to his hushed "hello" in an equally subdued tone, had started up the stairs.
"It is very late, Mr. Smith-Parvis. Good night."
"Never too late to mend," he said, and was supremely well-satisfied with what a superior intelligence might have recorded as a cryptic remark but what, to him, was an awfully clever "come-back." He had spent three years at Oxford. No beastly American college for him, by Jove!
Overcoming a cultivated antipathy to haste,—which he considered the lowest form of ignorance,—he bounded up the steps, three at a time, and overtook her midway to the top.
"I say, Miss Emsdale, I saw you come in, don't you know. I couldn't believe my eyes. What the deuce were you doing out with that common—er—chauffeur? D'you mean to say that you are running about with a chap of that sort, and letting him—"
"If you please, Mr. Smith-Parvis!" interrupted Miss Emsdale coldly. "Good night!"
"I don't mean to say you haven't the right to go about with any one you please," he persisted, planting himself in front of her at the top of the steps. "But a common chauffeur— Well, now, 'pon my word. Miss Emsdale, really you might just as well be seen with Peasley down there."
"Peasley is out of the question," said she, affecting a wry little smile, as of self-pity. "He is tooken, as you say in America. He walks out with Bessie, the parlour-maid."
"Walks out? Good Lord, you don't mean to say you'd—but, of course, you're spoofing me. One never knows how to take you English, no matter how long one may have lived in England. But I am serious. You cannot afford to be seen running around nights with fellows of that stripe. Rotten bounders, that's what I call 'em. Ever been out with him before?"
"Often, Mr. Smith-Parvis," she replied calmly. "I am sure you would like him if you knew him better. He is really a very—"
"Nonsense! He is a good chauffeur, I've no doubt,—Lawrie Carpenter says he's a treasure, but I've no desire to know him any better. And I don't like to think of you knowing him quite as well as you do, Miss Emsdale. See what I mean?"
"Perfectly. You mean that you will go to your mother with the report that I am not a fit person to be with the children. Isn't that what you mean?"
"Not at all. I'm not thinking of the kids. I'm thinking of myself. I'm pretty keen about you, and—"
"Aren't you forgetting yourself, Mr. Smith-Parvis?" she demanded curtly.
"Oh, I know there'd be a devil of a row if the mater ever dreamed that I— Oh, I say! Don't rush off in a huff. Wait a—"
But she had brushed past him and was swiftly ascending the second flight of stairs.
He stared after her in astonishment. He couldn't understand such stupidity, not even in a governess. There wasn't another girl in New York City, so far as he knew, who wouldn't have been pleased out of her boots to receive the significant mark of interest he was bestowing upon this lowly governess,—and here was she turning her back upon,— Why, what was the matter with her? He passed his hand over his brow and blinked a couple of times. And she only a paid governess! It was incredible.
He went slowly downstairs and, still in a sort of daze, found himself a few minutes later pouring out a large drink of whiskey in the dining-room. It was his habit to take a bottle of soda with his whiskey, but on this occasion he overcame it and gulped the liquor "neat." It appeared to be rather uplifting, so he had another. Then he went up to his own room and sulked for an hour before even preparing for bed. The more he thought of it, the graver her unseemly affront became.
"And to have her insult me like that," he said to himself over and over again, "when not three minutes before she had let that bally bounder carry her up— By gad, I'll give her something to think about in the morning. She sha'n't do that sort of thing to me. She'll find herself out of a job and with a damned poor reference in her pocket if she gets gay with me. She'll come down from her high horse, all right, all right. Positions like this one don't grow in the park. She's got to understand that. She can't go running around with chauffeurs and all— My God, to think that he had her in his arms! The one girl in all the world who has ever really made me sit up and take notice! Gad, I—I can't stand it—I can't bear to think of her cuddling up to that— The damned bounder!"
He sprang to his feet and bolted out into the hall. He was a spoiled young man with an aversion: an aversion to being denied anything that he wanted.
In the brief history of the Smith-Parvis family he occupied many full and far from prosaic pages. Smith-Parvis, Senior, was not a prodigal sort of person, and yet he had squandered a great many thousands of dollars in his time on Smith-Parvis, Junior. It costs money to bring up young men like Smith-Parvis, Junior; and by the same token it costs money to hold them down. The family history, if truthfully written, would contain passages in which the unbridled ambitions of Smith-Parvis, Junior, overwhelmed everything else. There would be the chapters excoriating the two chorus-girls who, in not widely separated instances, consented to release the young man from matrimonial pledges in return for so much cash; and there would be numerous paragraphs pertaining to auction-bridge, and others devoted entirely to tailors; to say nothing of uncompromising café and restaurant keepers who preferred the Smith-Parvis money to the Smith-Parvis trade.
The young man, having come to the conclusion that he wanted Miss Emsdale, ruthlessly decided to settle the matter at once. He would not wait till morning. He would go up to her room and tell her that if she knew what was good for her she'd listen to what he had to say. She was too nice a girl to throw herself away on a rotter like Trotter.
Then, as he came to the foot of the steps, he remembered the expression in her eyes as she swept past him an hour earlier. It suddenly occurred to him to pause and reflect. The look she gave him, now that he thought of it, was not that of a timid, frightened menial. Far from it! There was something imperious about it; he recalled the subtle, fleeting and hitherto unfamiliar chill it gave him.
Somewhat to his own amazement, he returned to his room and closed the door with surprising care. He usually slammed it.
"Dammit all," he said, half aloud, scowling at his reflection in the mirror across the room, "I—I wonder if she thinks she can put on airs with me." Later on he regained his self-assurance sufficiently to utter an ultimatum to the invisible offender: "You'll be eating out of my hand before you're two days older, my fine lady, or I'll know the reason why."
Smith-Parvis, Junior, wore the mask of a gentleman. As a matter-of-fact, the entire Smith-Parvis family went about masked by a similar air of gentility.
The hyphen had a good deal to do with it.
The head of the family, up to the time he came of age, was William Philander Smith, commonly called Bill by the young fellows in Yonkers. A maternal uncle, name of Parvis, being without wife or child at the age of seventy-eight, indicated a desire to perpetuate his name by hitching it to the sturdiest patronymic in the English language, and forthwith made a will, leaving all that he possessed to his only nephew, on condition that the said nephew and all his descendants should bear, henceforth and for ever, the name of Smith-Parvis.
That is how it all came about. William Philander, shortly after the fusion of names, fell heir to a great deal of money and in due time forsook Yonkers for Manhattan, where he took unto himself a wife in the person of Miss Angela Potts, only child of the late Simeon Potts, Esq., and Mrs. Potts, neither of whom, it would seem, had the slightest desire to perpetuate the family name. Indeed, as Angela was getting along pretty well toward thirty, they rather made a point of abolishing it before it was too late.
The first-born of William Philander and Angela was christened Stuyvesant Van Sturdevant Smith-Parvis, after one of the Pottses who came over at a time when the very best families in Holland, according to the infant's grandparents, were engaged in establishing an aristocracy at the foot of Manhattan Island.
After Stuyvesant,—ten years after, in fact,—came Regina Angela, who languished a while in the laps of the Pottses and the Smith-Parvis nurses, and died expectedly. When Stuyvie was fourteen the twins, Lucille and Eudora, came, and at that the Smith-Parvises packed up and went to England to live. Stuyvie managed in some way to make his way through Eton and part of the way through Oxford. He was sent down in his third year. It wasn't so easy to have his own way there. Moreover, he did not like Oxford because the rest of the boys persisted in calling him an American. He didn't mind being called a New Yorker, but they were rather obstinate about it.
Miss Emsdale was the new governess. The redoubtable Mrs. Sparflight had recommended her to Mrs. Smith-Parvis. Since her advent into the home in Fifth Avenue, some three or four months prior to the opening of this narrative, a marked change had come over Stuyvesant Van Sturdevant. It was principally noticeable in a recently formed habit of getting down to breakfast early. The twins and the governess had breakfast at half-past eight. Up to this time he had detested the twins. Of late, however, he appeared to have discovered that they were his sisters and rather interesting little beggars at that.
They were very much surprised by his altered behaviour. To the new governess they confided the somewhat startling suspicion that Stuyvie must be having softening of the brain, just as "grandpa" had when "papa" discovered that he was giving diamond rings to the servants and smiling at strangers in the street. It must be that, said they, for never before had Stuyvie kissed them or brought them expensive candies or smiled at them as he was doing in these wonderful days.
Stranger still, he never had been polite or agreeable to governesses—before. He always had called them frumps, or cats, or freaks, or something like that. Surely something must be the matter with him, or he wouldn't be so nice to Miss Emsdale. Up to now he positively had refused to look at her predecessors, much less to sit at the same table with them. He said they took away his appetite.
The twins adored Miss Emsdale.
"We love you because you are so awfuly good," they were wont to say. "And so beautiful," they invariably added, as if it were not quite the proper thing to say.
It was obvious to Miss Emsdale that Stuyvesant endorsed the supplemental tribute of the twins. He made it very plain to the new governess that he thought more of her beauty than he did of her goodness. He ogled her in a manner which, for want of a better expression, may be described as possessive. Instead of being complimented by his surreptitious admiration, she was distinctly annoyed. She disliked him intensely.
He was twenty-five. There were bags under his eyes. More than this need not be said in describing him, unless one is interested in the tiny black moustache that looked as though it might have been pasted, with great precision, in the centre of his long upper lip,—directly beneath the spreading nostrils of a broad and far from aristocratic nose. His lips were thick and coarse, his chin a trifle undershot. Physically, he was a well set-up fellow, tall and powerful.
For reasons best known to himself, and approved by his parents, he affected a distinctly English manner of speech. In that particular, he frequently out-Englished the English themselves.
As for Miss Emsdale, she was a long time going to sleep. The encounter with the scion of the house had left her in a disturbed frame of mind. She laid awake for hours wondering what the morrow would produce for her. Dismissal, no doubt, and with it a stinging rebuke for what Mrs. Smith-Parvis would consider herself justified in characterizing as unpardonable misconduct in one employed to teach innocent and impressionable young girls. Mingled with these dire thoughts were occasional thrills of delight. They were, however, of short duration and had to do with a pair of strong arms and a gentle, laughing voice.
In addition to these shifting fears and thrills, there were even more disquieting sensations growing out of the unwelcome attentions of Smith-Parvis, Junior. They were, so to speak, getting on her nerves. And now he had not only expressed himself in words, but had actually threatened her. There could be no mistake about that.
Her heart was heavy. She did not want to lose her position. The monthly checks she received from Mrs. Smith-Parvis meant a great deal to her. At least half of her pay went to England, and sometimes more than half. A friendly solicitor in London obtained the money on these drafts and forwarded it, without fee, to the sick young brother who would never walk again, the adored young brother who had fallen prey to the most cruel of all enemies: infantile paralysis.
Jane Thorne was the only daughter of the Earl of Wexham, who shot himself in London when the girl was but twelve years old. He left a penniless widow and two children. Wexham Manor, with all its fields and forests, had been sacrified beforehand by the reckless, ill-advised nobleman. The police found a half-crown in his pocket when they took charge of the body. It was the last of a once imposing fortune. The widow and children subsisted on the charity of a niggardly relative. With the death of the former, aften ten unhappy years as a dependent, Jane resolutely refused to accept help from the obnoxious relative. She set out to earn a living for herself and the crippled boy. We find her, after two years of struggle and privation, installed as Miss Emsdale in the Smith-Parvis mansion, earning one hundred dollars a month.
It is safe to say that if the Smith-Parvises had known that she was the daughter of an Earl, and that her brother was an Earl, there would have been great rejoicing among them; for it isn't everybody who can boast an Earl's daughter as governess.
One night in each week she was free to do as she pleased. It was, in plain words, her night out. She invariably spent it with the Marchioness and the coterie of unmasked spirits from lands across the seas.
What was she to say to Mrs. Smith-Parvis if called upon to account for her unconventional return of the night before? How could she explain? Her lips were closed by the seal of honour so far as the meetings above "Deborah's" were concerned. A law unwritten but steadfastly observed by every member of that remarkable, heterogeneous court, made it impossible for her to divulge her whereabouts or actions on this and other agreeable "nights out." No man or woman in that company would have violated, even under the gravest pressure, the compact under which so many well-preserved secrets were rendered secure from exposure.
Stuyvesant, in his rancour, would draw an ugly picture of her midnight adventure. He would, no doubt, feel inspired to add a few conclusions of his own. Her word, opposed to his, would have no effect on the verdict of the indulgent mother. She would stand accused and convicted of conduct unbecoming a governess! For, after all, Thomas Trotter was a chauffeur, and she couldn't make anything nobler out of him without saying that he wasn't Thomas Trotter at all.
She arose the next morning with a splitting headache, and the fear of Stuyvesant in her soul.
He was waiting for her in the hall below. The twins were accorded an unusually affectionate greeting by their big brother. He went so far as to implant a random kiss on the features of each of the "brats," as he called them in secret. Then he roughly shoved them ahead into the breakfast-room.
Fastening his gaze upon the pale, unsmiling face of Miss Emsdale, he whispered:
"Don't worry, my dear. Mum's the word."
He winked significantly. Revolted, she drew herself up and hurried after the children, unpleasantly conscious of the leer of admiration that rested upon her from behind.
He was very gay at breakfast.
"Mum's the word," he repeated in an undertone, as he drew back her chair at the conclusion of the meal. His lips were close to her ear, his hot breath on her cheek, as he bent forward to utter this reassuring remark.