Silver Wings (17 page)

The young people had gone for a horseback ride. Horses had been brought up from the riding club, smart riding togs had been donned, and the party had mounted and ridden away. Diana had looked adorable in a brilliant scarlet coat, little shiny red boots, and a red cap crowning her shining hair. Diana could wear any color and look better in it than anyone else.

Amory watched them ride away, standing at her window. She was getting a regular habit of standing there, watching and living in other people’s lives. It was like reading a fairy tale.

Mr. Whitney watched them ride away also, standing down on the terrace with his wife, and his voice was quite distinct as he spoke in a startled voice: “Why, where is John? Why isn’t he with them? I ordered horses enough. Did no one call him?”

“Oh, Sam Marsden came over. They had to ask him to go, of course. Besides, John wouldn’t want to go. He never has anything to do with the rest. They are not at all congenial, you know,” answered his wife.

“Why aren’t they congenial, I’d like to know?” asked the master of the castle, raising his voice angrily. “Isn’t my nephew good enough for them? They’re a nice bunch, I’ll say! Camp down in my house and eat my food and ride the horses I pay for, and then snub my nephew! I’ll—!”

“Hush, Henry! They’ll hear you!” warned his wife.

“Let them hear me!” he shouted, raising his voice a little louder. “If they don’t hear me now, they will when they come back. I’ll let them know what I think of a bunch that will romp all over my house and order my servants around and smoke my cigarettes and get underfoot everywhere, and then treat my nephew as if he were the dust under their feet!”

“Hush, Henry! Don’t you know that John will hear you? You don’t want to hurt his feelings, do you?”

“Hurt his feelings! I hurt his feelings? How would I hurt his feelings when I’m taking his part?”

“Why, you are letting him know that you suspect them of being impolite to him. He will think that you think he is not good enough—”

“Nothing of the kind! What do you take him for? Don’t you suppose he knows already how those young dudes and simpering fools that call themselves women are acting toward him? Don’t you suppose he has eyes in his head? Did you think he was a fool, too? Well, he’s not, and I’ll tell you another thing. He’s got the number of every one of these wild idiots your daughters have gathered around them, and there isn’t one of them that is worth John’s little finger so far as brains and good sense are concerned. Wouldn’t be congenial, I should say not—not to him!”

“Well, then, Henry dear,” said his wife soothingly, “why do you make such a fuss about it? If John wouldn’t enjoy them, why should you want to force them on him? Why not let him have pleasure in his own way?”

“Because John is my nephew, and I’m not going to have him insulted in my house!” said the master hotly. “Because John is a gentleman, and he is not going to show his preferences the way these young hyenas you have here do! He came here expecting to make himself agreeable, even if he had to go a few places he didn’t want to go and be entertaining to a few people who weren’t in his mental class at all, and by all that’s decent, he’s going to have a chance to show them how much better he is than they are, or they’re all going to get out before night. See? I’m about sick of this mess anyway, silly little fools of girls all dolled up with their spinal columns showing and their knees bare, making eyes at me and being impudent in the same breath, and turning my daughters into selfish little beasts like themselves!”

“Henry! The servants will hear you!”

“Let them hear! They found it out long ago. They’ll see that I have as much discernment as they have. You don’t suppose the servants don’t see the weaknesses of the people they serve?”

“They have no right to criticize their betters!” said Mrs. Whitney with dignity. “If I thought one of them dared even think a criticism of us and our guests, I would dismiss them at once.”

“Oh, you would, would you? Well, you wouldn’t show any better sense than the kids then. Why haven’t they a right to criticize, I’d like to know? You don’t pay them to give up thinking, do you? Isn’t this a free country? And when it comes right down to that, the only girl in this house that has a modest, quiet, decent way with her is that pretty little secretary you’ve just imported. If you ask me, now there’s a girl I’d like to have my daughters associated with. There’s a girl that can dress up sweetly and look like a flower and carry herself well, and she doesn’t sprawl all over the place trying to exhibit her clothes and herself and trying to say something smart. She doesn’t try to get every fool boy on her string, nor plot to make a stranger fall in love with her.”

Amory, at her window, suddenly sat down in her chair and buried her face in her hands, the color flooding her cheeks. Oh, she never plotted to make a strange man fall in love with her, but what would Mr. Whitney think if he knew who had called her on the telephone at eleven o’clock Sunday night? What would he think if he ever found those two little silver wings now hidden away in the depths of her trunk?

But the voice outside stormed on.

“The young men nowadays are most of them fools, anyway, or worse. John is the only one that is a real man, with the possible exception of your nephew Ted, and I think he’s wasting his life, flying around in the sky when he ought to get his feet down on earth and do something really worthwhile. However, he thinks he’s doing something that amounts to something, and that’s more than the others do. He’s got nerve, I’ll hand him that. But these others, bah! They make me sick! They have only nerve to be insolent! Take that Blaine fellow. Why, he’s a drunk! That’s all there is to him! Why you are willing to have him around your daughters, I can’t understand! Of course, he isn’t paying much attention to them I’ll grant, not even enough to be polite while he’s in their father’s house, but I wouldn’t want them even to see a specimen like that! I wouldn’t want their standards lowered to that extent. But perhaps you think that they never had any standards to lower, and I guess you’re right!”

“Henry!” she said tearfully. “You are disgracing us!”

“Is that possible? I thought we had already fallen too low to be disgraced! What is it they call it when a quantity of water gets as much of a solution as it can assimilate, a saturate solution? Well, I thought we had about reached that stage. I thought we had a saturate solution of disgrace in our family. After that affair Caroline had with that poor fool in Florida last winter, and the night we found Doris out with Standish Mortimer at three—”

“Henry! Stop! I shall not listen to another word!” sobbed Mrs. Whitney, turning to go into the house.

“Here! No, you’re not going to get out of it that way, Leila! You can come right back here and listen till I’m through. I’ve just one more thing to say, and I’m going to say it and you’re going to hear it if I have to raise my voice still higher. I want it understood that John is to be a part of everything that goes on here while this infernal party lasts. If he doesn’t, I’ll take pleasure in sending all these ill-mannered guests to their homes with a few frank parting words. Now, do you understand?”

“Why certainly, Henry! Of course we will ask him if you wish!” said the tearful, self-controlled voice of Mrs. Whitney, looking anxiously toward the upper windows to see if anyone was listening. “I should have attended to it long before if I had understood that it was your wish. I supposed, of course, that you would want John to feel at home here and do just as he pleased, and I am sure he has had all the freedom—”

“He certainly has!” said his uncle vindictively. “The only member of the family who has even lifted an eyelash toward him since his arrival is our son, who has utterly monopolized him, which only goes to prove that John is entirely unselfish. Now, from now on things change! Take that parade to the Old Fort that is being pulled off tomorrow—utterly ridiculous of course, because no one wants to see the ramshackle place, but you’ve started it, so it must go through. Take along a big lunch and eat with bugs running around in your mouth and ants on your fingers, and sit on the ground with your legs curled in uncomfortable positions—however, you’re going! And John is going, too!”

“But I’m not sure he’ll want to go, Henry!”

“I’ll see that he goes anyway!”

“But Henry—”

“No ‘But-Henrys’! He’s going or nobody goes! Not one of our cars will go on that trip unless John is invited by you and by Caroline and Doris to go also. What’s more, it’s got to be a cordial invitation, too, and given at the dinner table where I can hear it and where everybody else can hear it! And if it isn’t just as well done as you would do it for that sneak of a Barry Blaine, who snoops around and tries to find my wine closet when no one is looking, I’ll just can the whole show. That’s final! You can do as you please, but you know what to expect if you do.”

With which parting shot, the gentleman of the house retired to his den, while his wife, breathless and tearful, with a bright red spot on each cheek that was not put there artificially, beat a hasty retreat to her room to repair damages before anyone saw her.

So John Dunleith went along the next day on the drive.

Whether he wanted to go along or not is another story. But two things had conspired to make him willing, and he went. The first was that his uncle had dropped a word just before dinner that evening.

“John, I suppose it will bore you to death to go on that jamboree with the bunch tomorrow, but I’d be awfully obliged if you felt you could. I don’t like to have the kid go without someone along to look after him, and the rest are all too busy with their own affairs. And then, too, I don’t feel any too certain of that Blaine fellow. He drinks like a fish, and you never know what he’s up to. If you can just manage to keep an eye on his operations, I’ll be doubly thankful.”

Of course John felt that he must go, though he knew of almost nothing he would not rather do.

The other reason was Blaine himself. Dunleith had been watching how things were going, and for some reason he could not bring himself to forget the girl for whom he had been praying. That she was a frivolous, worldly creature, treacherous and untrue with all her beauty, he did not doubt, yet something in her appealed to him for protection. He might be a fool—he probably was—but he decided to go along.

A much surprised boy was Neddy when he was informed by his father that he was to go along. He opened his mouth to protest loudly. He hated the crowd, and he knew they hated him. It bored him to death to take a long drive with older people, and he had plans of his own.

But the father added that Cousin John was going also, and Neddy broke forth with a whoop of joy.

Mrs. Whitney gave the compulsory invitation most gracefully at dinner, though her daughters almost spoiled it all with their expressions of dismay.

“Great cats! What has come over Mama Whitney?” whispered Susanne to Caroline as they rose from the dinner table. “Why does she want to stick us all day with that poor fish? He doesn’t speak two words to any of us.”

“It’s not Mama, it’s Daddy,” declared the wise daughter. “He’s probably made a point of it, and when Dad makes a point of a thing Mother is wise enough to agree with him. But he won’t bother us. They’re sending the kid, too, and they’ll probably go off somewhere together.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, don’t put him in the car with me. I had my dose of him the night I talked to him at the table just to show Diana. I thought I’d pass out. We haven’t two ideas in common!”

Diana did not show by so much as the turn of an eyelash that she had heard the minister invited, but later, when they had all gone into the library to turn on the radio and see if there was news of the flier, she slipped up behind him and spoke in a low tone.

“Mr. Dunleith, I’m very glad you’re to go with us tomorrow, for I want very much to have you tell me what all those books you sent me mean. You’ll think I’m very stupid, perhaps, but I just couldn’t get head nor tail of any of them.”

“Perhaps you began at the wrong end,” said the young man, smiling enigmatically.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that to the natural man, these things are foolishness. Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned.”

“Well,” said Diana, “how do you do that? Can’t you tell me tomorrow?”

“If you are in earnest.”

“Yes, I’m in earnest,” said the girl, lifting clear liquid eyes to his face, eyes that would deceive the very elect with their loveliness. But what she saw in his eyes was utter doubt of her, and in spite of her nonchalance, she colored.

“You don’t think I am!” she challenged.

“No, I don’t think you are,” said the young man, with a drawing of breath that sounded like a sigh.

“You have no right to say that!” said Diana in a vexed tone.

“Haven’t I?” he asked, looking searchingly into her face.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said again, half angry, but the more determined to get him to tell her. “I want to understand you very much. I want to know what it is that makes you different.”

“Different?”

“Yes, you are different. I can’t understand it. You are good looking and well educated, you are young, can talk well and act well, and could be popular if you half tried, and you don’t seem to get a thing out of life for yourself.”

He smiled. “I suppose I ought to thank you for painting such a pleasant portrait of me, but you see, the truth is I’ve found something better than just getting things out of life for myself.”

“What is it?” she asked eagerly, and there was a ring of genuineness to her tone for the first time.

He studied her a moment, and then he said earnestly, “It is to let God get the best He has planned for me out of life.”

“Oh!” said she, her face perceptibly lengthened. “But why? How? I’m sure I don’t understand at all what you mean. It seems such a perfect waste, you young and good looking and bright, and able to do something worthwhile in the world, to be shut up to a stuffy thing like preaching to a lot of old women and children. What’s the good of it all, anyhow? I wish you’d give it all up and get into some real business, and be my friend. I like you, see? It makes me cross to have you waste your splendid self on such things when we might have such good times if you only would be reasonable. Come, here’s a challenge! Be a good sport and a real man! I can’t bear to think of you wasted this way.”