Sleeping Fires Part 26

Mrs. Montgomery, a good kind woman, whose purse was always open to her less fortunate friends, shook her head. "I do not like such a sequel. I agree with Alexina and Charlotte. They disgraced themselves and our proud little Society; they should have been more severely punished.

Possibly they will be."

"I doubt it," said Mrs. Bascom drily. "And not only because I am a woman of the world and have looked at life with both eyes open, but because Masters had success in him. I'll wager he's had his troubles all in one great landslide. And Madeleine was born to be some man's poem. The luxe binding got badly torn and stained, but no doubt she's got a finer one than ever, and is unchanged--or even improved--inside."

"Oh, do let me get in a word edgeways," cried young Mrs. Abbott. "Tell me, Mamma--what does Madeleine look like? Has she lost her beauty?"

"She looked to me more beautiful than ever. I'd vow Masters thinks so."

"Has she wrinkles? Lines?"

"Not one. Have we grown old since she left us? It's not so many years ago?"

"Oh, I know. But after all she went through.... How was she dressed?"

"What are her favorite colors?"

"Who makes her gowns?"

"Has she as much elegance and style as ever?"

"Did she get her mother's jewels? Did she wear them in Berlin?"

"Is she in Society there? Is her grand air as noticeable among all those court people as it was here?"

"Oh, mamma, mamma, you are so tiresome!"

Mrs. McLane had had time to drink a second cup of tea.

"My head spins. Where shall I begin? The gowns she wore in Berlin were made at Worth's. Where else? She still wears golden-brown, and amber, and green--sometimes azure--blue at night. She looked like a fairy queen in blue gauze and diamond stars in her hair one night at the American Legation--"

"How does she wear her hair?"

"There she is not so much a la mode. She has studied her own style, and has found several ways of dressing it that become her--sometimes in a low coil, almost on her neck, sometimes on top of her head in a braid like a coronet, sometimes in a soft psyche knot. There never was anything monotonous about Madeleine."

"I'm going to try every one tomorrow. Has she any children?"

"One. She left him at their place in Virginia. I saw his picture. A beauty, of course."

Mrs. Ballinger raised her pencilled eyebrows and glanced at Maria. Mrs.

Abbott gave a deep rumbling groan.

"Poor Howard!"

"He dreed his weird," said Mrs. McLane indifferently. "He couldn't help it. Neither could Madeleine."

"Well, I'd like to hear something more about Langdon Masters,"

announced Guadalupe Bascom. "That is, if you have all satisfied your curiosity about Madeleine's clothes. He is the one man I never could twist around my finger and I've never forgotten him. How does he look?

He certainly should carry some stamp of the life he led."

"Oh, he looks older, of course, and he has deeper lines and some gray hairs. But he's thin, at least. His figure did not suffer if his face did--somewhat. He looks even more interesting--at least women would think so. You know we good women always have a fatal weakness for the man who has lived too much."

"Speak for yourself, Antoinette." Mrs. Ballinger looked like an effigy of virtue in silver. "And at your age you should be ashamed to utter such a sentiment even if you felt it."

"My hair may be as white as yours," rejoined Mrs. McLane tartly. "But I remain a woman, and for that reason attract men to this day."

"Is Masters as brilliant as ever--in conversation, I mean? Is he gay?

Lively?"

"I cannot say that I found him gay, and I really saw very little of him except at functions. He was very busy. But Mr. McLane was with him a good deal, and said that although he was rather grim and quiet at times, at others he was as brilliant as his letters."

"Does he drink at all, or is he forced to be a teetotaller?"

"Not a bit of it. He drinks at table as others do; no more, no less."

"Then he is cured," said Mrs. Bascom contentedly. "Well, I for one am glad that it's all right. Still, if he had fallen in love with me he would have remained an eminent citizen--without a hideous interval he hardly can care to recall--and become the greatest editor in California. Have they any social position in New York?"

"Probably. I did not ask. They hardly looked like outcasts. You must remember their story is wholly unknown in fas.h.i.+onable New York.

Scarcely any one here knows any one in New York Society; or has time for it when pa.s.sing through.... But I don't fancy they care particularly for Society. In Berlin, whenever it was possible, they went off by themselves. But of course it was necessary for both to go in Society there, and she must have been able to help him a good deal."

"European Society! I suppose she'll be presented to the Queen of England next!--But no! Thank heaven she can't be. Good Queen Victoria is as rigid about divorce as we are. Nor shall she ever cross my threshold if she returns here." And Mrs. Abbott scalded herself with her third cup of tea and emitted terrible sounds.

Mrs. Yorba, a tall, spare, severe-looking woman, who had taught school in New England in her youth, and never even powdered her nose, spoke for the first time. Her tones were slow and portentious, as became one who, owing to her unfortunate nativity, had sailed slowly into this castellated harbor, albeit on her husband's golden s.h.i.+p.

"We may no longer have it in our power to punish Mrs. Langdon Masters,"

she said. "But at least we shall punish others who violate our code, even as we have done in the past. San Francisco Society shall always be a model for the rest of the world."

"I hope so!" cried Mrs. McLane. "But the world has a queer fas.h.i.+on of changing and moving."

Mrs. Ballinger rose. "I have no misgivings for the future of our Society, Antoinette McLane. Our grandchildren will uphold the traditions we have created, for our children will pa.s.s on to them our own immutable laws. Shall we go into the front parlor? I do so want to show it to you. I have a new set of blue satin damask and a crystal chandelier."

THE END