The Firing Line Part 81

"I'll do what I please!" shouted Portlaw, exasperated.

Malcourt had two ways of making Portlaw do a thing; one was to tell him not to, the other the reverse. He always ended by doing it anyway; but the quicker result was obtained by the first method.

So Malcourt went to New York next morning convinced that Portlaw's bachelor days were numbered; aware, also, that as soon as Mrs. Ascott took the helm his own tenure of office would promptly expire. He wished it to expire, easily, agreeably, naturally; and that is why he had chosen to shove Portlaw in the general direction of the hymeneal altar.

He did not care very much for Portlaw--scarcely enough to avoid hurting his feelings by abandoning him. But now he had arranged it so that to all appearances the abandoning would be done by Portlaw, inspired by the stronger mind of Mrs. Ascott. It had been easy and rather amusing to arrange; it saved wordy and endless disputes with Portlaw; it would give him a longed-for release from an occupation he had come to hate.

Malcourt was tired. He wanted a year of freedom from dependence, surcease of responsibility--a year to roam where he wished, foregather with whom he pleased, haunt the places congenial to him, come and go unhampered; a year of it--only one year. What remained for him to do after the year had expired he thought he understood; yes, he was practically certain--had always been.

But first must come that wonderful year he had planned--or, if he tired of the pleasure sooner, then, as the caprice stirred him, he would do what he had planned to do ever since his father died. The details only remained to be settled.

For Malcourt, with all the contradictions in his character, all his cynicism, effrontery, ruthlessness, preferred to do things in a manner calculated to spare the prejudices of others; and if there was a way to accomplish a thing without hurting people, he usually took the trouble to do it in that way. If not, he did it anyway.

And now, at last, he saw before him the beginning of that curious year for which he had so long waited; and, concerning the closing details of which, he had pondered so often with his dark, handsome head lowered and slightly turned, listening, always listening.

But nothing of this had he spoken of to his wife. It was not necessary.

He had a year in which to live in a certain manner and do a certain thing; and it was going to amuse him to do it in a way which would harm n.o.body.

The year promised to be an interesting one, to judge from all signs. For one item his sister, Lady Tressilvain, was impending from Paris--also his brother-in-law--complicating the humour of the visitation.

Malcourt's marriage to an heiress was the perfectly obvious incentive of the visit. And when they wrote that they were coming to New York, it amused Malcourt exceedingly to invite them to Luckless Lake. But he said nothing about it to Portlaw or his wife.

Then, for another thing, the regeneration and development, ethically and artistically, of Dolly Wilming amused him. He wanted to be near enough to watch it--without, however, any real faith in its continuation.

And, also, there was Miss Suydam. Her development would not be quite as agreeable to witness; process of disillusioning her, little by little, until he had undermined himself sufficiently to make the final break with her very easy--for her. Of course it interested him; all intrigue did where skill was required with women.

And, last of all, yet of supreme importance, he desired leisure, undisturbed, to study his own c.u.mulative development, to humorously thwart it, or misunderstand it, or slyly aid it now and then--always aware of and attentive to that extraneous something which held him so motionless, at moments, listening attentively as though to a command.

For, from that morning four years ago when, crushed with fatigue, he strove to keep his vigil beside his father who, toward daybreak, had been feigning sleep--from that dreadful dawn when, waking with the crash of the shot in his ears, his blinded gaze beheld the pa.s.sing of a soul--he understood that he was no longer his own master.

Not that the occult triad, Chance, Fate, and Destiny ruled; they only modified his...o...b..t. But from the centre of things Something that ruled them was pulling him toward it, slowly, steadily, inexorably drawing him nearer, lessening the circ.u.mference of his path, attenuating it, circ.u.mscribing, limiting, controlling. And long since he had learned to name this thing, undismayed--this one thing remaining in the world in which his father's son might take a sporting interest.

He had been in New York two weeks, enjoying existence in his own fas.h.i.+on, untroubled by any demands, questions, or scruples concerning responsibility, when a pa.s.sionate letter from Portlaw disturbed the placid interlude:

"Confound it, Louis, haven't you the common decency to come back when you know I've had a bunch of people here to be entertained?

"n.o.body's heard a peep from you. What on earth do you mean by this?

"Miss Palliser, Mrs. Ascott, Miss Cardross are here, also Wayward, and Gray Cardross--which with you and Mrs. Malcourt and myself solves the Bridge proposition--or would have solved it.

But without warning, yesterday, your sister and brother-in-law arrived, bag and baggage, and Mrs. Malcourt has given them the west wing of your house. I believe she was as astonished as I, but she will not admit it.

"I don't know whether this is some sorry jest of yours--not that Lady Tressilvain and her n.o.ble spouse are unwelcome--but for Heaven's sake consider Wayward's feelings--cooped up in camp with his ex-wife! It wasn't a very funny thing to do, Louis; but now that it's done you can come back and take care of the mess you've made.

"As for Mrs. Malcourt, she is not merely a trump, she is a hundred aces and a grand slam in a redoubled Without!--if that's possible. But Mrs. Ascott is my pillar of support in what might easily become a fool of a situation.

"And you, you amateur idiot!--are down there in town, humorously awaiting the shriek of anguish from me. Well, you've heard me.

But it's not a senseless shriek; it's a dignified protest. I tell you I've learned to depend on myself, recently--at Mrs. Ascott's suggestion. And I'm doing it now by wiring Virginia Suydam to come and fill in the third table.

"Now I want you to come back at once. If you don't I'm going to have a serious talk with you, Louis. I've taken Mrs. Ascott into my confidence more or less and she agrees with me that I ought to lay down a strong, rigid policy and that it is your duty to execute it. In fact she also took me into her confidence and gave me, at my request, a very clear idea of how she would run this place; and to my surprise and gratification I find that her ideas of discipline, taste, and economy are exactly mine, although I thought of them first and perhaps have influenced her in this matter as I have in others. That is, of course, natural, she being a woman.

"I think I ought to be frank with you, Louis. It isn't good form for you to leave Mrs. Malcourt the way you do every week or two and disappear in New York and give no explanation. You haven't been married long enough to do that. It isn't square to me, either.

"And while I'm about it I want to add that, at Mrs. Ascott's suggestion--which really is my own idea--I have decided not to build all those Rhine castles, which useless notion, if I am not mistaken, originated with you. I don't want to disfigure my beautiful wilderness. Mrs. Ascott and I had a very plain talk with Hamil and we forced him to agree with us that the less he did to improve my place the better for the place. He seemed to take it good-humouredly. He left yesterday to look over Mrs.

Ascott's place and plan for her a formal garden and Trianon at Pride's Hall. So he being out I wired also to Virginia and to Philip Gatewood, which will make it right--four at a table. Your brother-in-law plays a stiff game and your sister is a wonder!--five grand slams last night! But I played like a dub--I'd been riding and walking and canoeing all day with Mrs.

Ascott and I was terribly sleepy.

"So come on up, Louis. I'll forgive you--but don't mind if I growl at you before Mrs. Ascott as she thinks I ought to discipline you. And, confound it, I ought to, and I will, too, if you don't look out. But I'll be devilish glad to see you.

"Yours, "W. VAN BEUREN PORTLAW."

Malcourt, in his arm-chair by the open window, lay back full length, every fibre of him vibrating with laughter.

Dolly Wilming at the piano continued running over the pretty firework melodies of last season's metropolitan success--a success built entirely on a Viennese waltz, the air of which might have been taken from almost any popular Yankee hymn-book.

He folded Portlaw's letter and pocketed it; and lay for a while under the open window, enjoying his own noiseless mirth, gaily accompanied by Dolly Winning's fresh, clear singing or her capricious improvising.

Begonias bloomed in a riotous row on the sill, nodding gently in the river-wind which also fluttered the flags and sails on yacht, schooner, and sloop under the wall of the Palisades.

That day the North River was more green than blue--like the eyes of a girl he knew; summer, crowned and trimmed with green, brooded on the long rock rampart across the stream. Turquoise patches of sky and big clouds, leafy parapets, s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing to the sea; and in mid-stream an anch.o.r.ed island of steel painted white and buff, bristling with long thin guns, the flower-like flag rippling astern; another battle-s.h.i.+p farther north; another, another; and farther still the white tomb--unlovely mansion of the dead--on outpost duty above the river, guarding with the warning of its dead glories the unlovely mansions of the living ranged along the most n.o.ble terrace in the world.

And everywhere to north, south, and east, the endless waste of city, stark, clean-cut, naked alike of tree and of art, unsoftened even by the haze of its own exudations--everywhere the window-riddled blocks of oblongs and cubes gridironed with steel rails--New York in all the painted squalor of its Pueblo splendour.

"You say you are doing well in everything except French and Italian?"

Dolly, still humming to her own accompaniment, looked over her shoulder and nodded.

"Well, how the d.i.c.kens are you ever going to sing at either Opera or on the road or anywhere if you don't learn French and Italian?"

"I'm trying, Louis."

"Go ahead; let's hear something, then."

And she sang very intelligently and in excellent taste:

"Pendant que, plein d'amour, j'expire a votre porte, Vous dormez d'un paisible sommeil--"

and turned questioningly to him.

"That's all right; try another."

So, serenely obedient, she sang:

"Chantons Margot, nos amours, Margot leste et bien tournee--"

"Well, I don't see anything the matter with your French," he muttered.