"Nothing," he said solemnly; "it is as adorable as the girl inside it, who makes it look like a Parisian importation from Paradise!"
She colored enchantingly, and with pretty, frank impulse held out both her hands to him:
"You are a dear, Captain Selwyn! It is my first real dinner gown and I'm quite mad about it; andsomehow I wanted the family to share my madness with me. Nina willshe gave it to me, the darling. Austin admires it, too, of course, but he doesn't notice such things very closely; and Gerald isn't here. . . . Thank you for letting me show it to you before I go down."
She gave both his hands a friendly little shake and, glancing down at her skirt in blissful consciousness of its perfection, stepped backward into her own room.
Later, while he stood at his dresser constructing an immaculate knot in his white tie, Nina knocked.
"Hurry, Phil! Oh, may I come in? . . . You ought to be downstairs with us, you know. . . . And it was very sweet of you to be so nice to Eileen. The child had tears in her eyes when I went in. Oh, just a single diamond drop in each eye; your sympathy and interest did it. . . . I think the child misses her father on an occasion such as thisthe beginning of lifethe first step out into the world. Men do not understand what it means to us; Gerald doesn't, I'm sure. I've been watching her, and I know the shadow of that dreadful tragedy falls on her more often than Austin and I are aware of. . . . Shall I fix that tie for you, dear? . . . Certainly I can; Austin won't let a man touch him. . . . There, Phil. . . . Wait! . . . Now if you are decently grateful you'll tell me I look well. Do I? Really? Nonsense, I don't look twenty; butsay it, Phil. Ah, that clever maid of mine knows some secretsnever mind!but Drina thinks I'm a beauty. . . . Come, dear; and thank you for being kind to Eileen. One's own kin counts so much in this world. And when a girl has none, except a useless brother, little things like that mean a lot to her." She turned, her hand falling on his sleeve. "You are among your own people, anyhow!"
His own people! The impatient tenderness of his sister's words had been sounding in his ears all through the evening. They rang out clear and insistent amid the gay tumult of the dinner; he heard them in the laughing confusion of youthful voices; they stole into the delicate undertones of the music to mock him; the rustling of silk and lace repeated them; the high heels of satin slippers echoed them in irony.
His own people!
The scent of overheated flowers, the sudden warm breeze eddying from a capricious fan, the mourning thrill of the violins emphasised the emphasis of the words.
And they sounded sadder and more meaningless now to him, here in his own room, until the monotony of their recurrent mockery began to unnerve him.
He turned on the electricity, shrank from it, extinguished it. And for a long time he sat there in the darkness of early morning, his unfilled pipe clutched in his nerveless hand.
CHAPTER II
A DREAM ENDS
To pick up once more and tighten and knot together the loosened threads which represented the unfinished record that his race had woven into the social fabric of the metropolis was merely an automatic matter for Selwyn.
His own people had always been among the makers of that fabric. Into part of its vast and intricate pattern they had woven an inconspicuously honourable recordchronicles of births and deaths and marriages, a plain memorandum of plain living, and upright dealing with their fellow men.
Some public service of modest nature they had performed, not seeking it, not shirking; accomplishing it cleanly when it was intrusted to them.
His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional menphysicians and lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained indefinitely at Malvern Hill; an only brother at Montauk Point having sickened in the trenches before Santiago.
His father's services as division medical officer in Sheridan's cavalry had been, perhaps, no more devoted, no more loyal than the services of thousands of officers and troopers; and his reward was a pension offer, declined. He practised until his wife died, then retired to his country home, from which house his daughter Nina was married to Austin Gerard.
Mr. Selwyn, senior, continued to pay his taxes on his father's house in Tenth Street, voted in that district, spent a month every year with the Gerards, read a Republican morning newspaper, and judiciously enlarged the family reservation in Greenwoodwhither he retired, in due time, without other ostentation than half a column in the Evening Post, which paper he had, in life, avoided.
The first gun off the Florida Keys sent Selwyn's only brother from his law office in hot haste to San Antoniothe first étape on his first and last campaign with Wood's cavalry.
That same gun interrupted Selwyn's connection with Neergard & Co., operators in Long Island real estate; and, a year later, the captaincy offered him in a Western volunteer regiment operating on the Island of Leyte, completed the rupture.
And now he was back again, a chance career ended, with option of picking up the severed threadshis inheritance at the loomand of retying them, warp and weft, and continuing the pattern according to the designs of the tufted, tinted pile-yarn, knotted in by his ancestors before him.
There was nothing else to do; so he did it. Civil and certain social obligations were mechanically reassumed; he appeared in his sister's pew for worship, he reënrolled in his clubs as a resident member once more; the directors of such charities as he meddled with he notified of his return; he remitted his dues to the various museums and municipal or private organisations which had always expected support from his family; he subscribed to the Sun.
He was more conservative, however, in mending the purely social strands so long relaxed or severed. The various registers and blue-books recorded his residence under "dilatory domiciles"; he did not subscribe to the opera, preferring to chance it in case harmony-hunger attacked him; pre-Yuletide functions he dodged, considering that his sister's days in January and attendance at other family formalities were sufficient.
Meanwhile he was looking for two thingsan apartment and a jobthe first energetically combated by his immediate family.
It was rather oddthe scarcity of jobs. Of course Austin offered him one which Selwyn declined at once, comfortably enraging his brother-in-law for nearly ten minutes.
"But what do I know about the investment of trust funds?" demanded Selwyn; "you wouldn't take me if I were not your wife's brotherand that's nepotism."
Austin's harmless fury raged for nearly ten minutes, after which he cheered up, relighted his cigar, and resumed his discussion with Selwyn concerning the merits of various boys' schoolsthe victim in prospective being Billy.
A little later, reverting to the subject of his own enforced idleness, Selwyn said: "I've been on the point of going to see Neergardbut somehow I can't quite bring myself to itslinking into his office as a rank failure in one profession, to ask him if he has any use for me again."
"Stuff and fancy!" growled Gerard; "it's all stuff and fancy about your being any kind of a failure. If you want to resume with that Dutchman, go to him and say so. If you want to invest anything in his Long Island schemes he'll take you in fast enough. He took in Gerald and some twenty thousand."
"Isn't he very prosperous, Austin?"
"Isn't he very prosperous, Austin?"
"Veryon paper. Long Island farm lands and mortgages on Hampton hen-coops are not fragrant propositions to me. But there's always one more way of making a living after you counted 'em all up on your fingers. If you've any capital to offer Neergard, he won't shriek for help."
"But isn't suburban property"
"On the jump? Yesboth ways. Oh, I suppose that Neergard is all rightif he wasn't I wouldn't have permitted Gerald to go into it. Neergard sticks to his commissions and doesn't back his fancy in certified checks. I don't know exactly how he operates; I only know that we find nothing in that sort of thing for our own account. But Fane, Harmon & Co. do. That's their affair, too; it's all a matter of taste, I tell you."
Selwyn reflected: "I believe I'd go and see Neergard if I were perfectly sure of my personal sentiments toward him. . . . He's been civil enough to me, of course, but I have always had a curious feeling about Neergardthat he's for ever on the edge of doing somethingdoubtful"
"His business reputation is all right. He shaves the dead line like a safety razor, but he's never yet cut through it. On principle, however, look out for an apple-faced Dutchman with a thin nose and no lips. Neither Jew, Yankee, nor American stands any chance in a deal with that type of financier. Personally my feeling is this: if I've got to play games with Julius Neergard, I'd prefer to be his partner. And so I told Gerald. By the way"
Austin checked himself, looked down at his cigar, turned it over and over several times, then continued quietly:
"By the way, I suppose Gerald is like other young men of his age and timesimmersed in his own affairsthoughtless perhaps, perhaps a trifle selfish in the cross-country gallop after pleasure. . . . I was rather severe with him about his neglect of his sister. He ought to have come here to pay his respects to you, too"
"Oh, don't put such notions into his head"
"Yes, I will!" insisted Austin; "however indifferent and thoughtless and selfish he is to other people, he's got to be considerate toward his own family. And I told him so. Have you seen him lately?"
"N-o," admitted Selwyn.
"Not since that first time when he came to do the civil by you?"
"No; but don't"
"Yes, I will," repeated his brother-in-law; "and I'm going to have a thorough explanation with him and learn what he's up to. He's got to be decent to his sister; he ought to report to me occasionally; that's all there is to it. He has entirely too much liberty with his bachelor quarters and his junior whipper-snapper club, and his house parties and his cruises on Neergard's boat!"
He got up, casting his cigar from him, and moved about bulkily, muttering of matters to be regulated, and firmly, too. But Selwyn, looking out of the window across the Park, knew perfectly well that young Erroll, now of age, with a small portion of his handsome income at his mercy, was past the regulating stage and beyond the authority of Austin. There was no harm in him; he was simply a joyous, pleasure-loving cub, chock full of energetic instincts, good and bad, right and wrong, out of which, formed from the acts which become habits, character matures. This was his estimate of Gerald.
The next morning, riding in the Park with Eileen, he found a chance to speak cordially of her brother.
"I've meant to look up Gerald," he said, as though the neglect were his own fault, "but every time something happens to switch me on to another track."
"I'm afraid that I do a great deal of the switching," she said; "don't I? But you've been so nice to me and to the children that"
Miss Erroll's horse was behaving badly, and for a few moments she became too thoroughly occupied with her mount to finish her sentence.
The belted groom galloped up, prepared for emergencies, and he and Selwyn sat their saddles watching a pretty battle for mastery between a beautiful horse determined to be bad and a very determined young girl who had decided he was going to be good.
Once or twice the excitement of solicitude sent the colour flying into Selwyn's temples; the bridle-path was narrow and stiff with freezing sand, and the trees were too near for such lively manoeuvres; but Miss Erroll had made up her mindand Selwyn already had a humorous idea that this was no light matter. The horse found it serious enough, too, and suddenly concluded to be good. And the pretty scene ended so abruptly that Selwyn laughed aloud as he rejoined her:
"There was a man'Boots' Lansingin Bannard's command. One night on Samar the bolo-men rushed us, and Lansing got into the six-foot major's boots by mistakeseven-leaguers, you knowand his horse bucked him clean out of them."
"Hence his Christian name, I suppose," said the girl; "but why such a story, Captain Selwyn? I believe I stuck to my saddle?"
"With both hands," he said cordially, always alert to plague her. For she was adorable when teasedespecially in the beginning of their acquaintance, before she had found out that it was a habit of hisand her bright confusion always delighted him into further mischief.
"But I wasn't a bit worried," he continued; "you had him so firmly around the neck. Besides, what horse or man could resist such a pleading pair of arms around the neck?"
"What you saw," she said, flushing up, "is exactly the way I shall do any pleading with the two animals you mention."
"Spur and curb and thrash us? Oh, my!"
"Not if you're bridle-wise, Captain Selwyn," she returned sweetly. "And you know you always are. And sometimes"she crossed her crop and looked around at him reflectively"sometimes, do you know, I am almost afraid that you are so very, very good, that perhaps you are becoming almost goody-good."
"What!" he exclaimed indignantly; but his only answer was her head thrown back and a ripple of enchanting laughter.
Later she remarked: "It's just as Nina says, after all, isn't it?"
"I suppose so," he replied suspiciously; "what?"
"That Gerald isn't really very wicked, but he likes to have us think so. It's a sign of extreme self-consciousness, isn't it," she added innocently, "when a man is afraid that a woman thinks he is very, very good?"
"That," he said, "is the limit. I'm going to ride by myself."
Her pleasure in Selwyn's society had gradually become such genuine pleasure, her confidence in his kindness so unaffectedly sincere, that, insensibly, she had fallen into something of his manner of badinageespecially since she realised how much amusement he found in her own smiling confusion when unexpectedly assailed. Also, to her surprise, she found that he could be plagued very easily, though she did not quite dare to at first, in view of his impressive years and experience.
But once goaded to it, she was astonished to find how suddenly it seemed to readjust their personal relationsyears and experience falling from his shoulders like a cloak which had concealed a man very nearly her own age; years and experience adding themselves to her, and at least an inch to her stature to redress the balance between them.
It had amused him immensely as he realised the subtle change; and it pleased him, too, because no man of thirty-five cares to be treated en grandpère by a girl of nineteen, even if she has not yet worn the polish from her first pair of high-heeled shoes.
"It's astonishing," he said, "how little respect infirmity and age command in these days."
"I do respect you," she insisted, "especially your infirmity of purpose. You said you were going to ride by yourself. But, do you know, I don't believe you are of a particularly solitary disposition; are you?"