Читать книгу The Unforgiving Offender - John Reed Scott - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Stephanie Lorraine, choosing a round-about route through the Park, drove slowly homeward—passing on the way numerous acquaintances and erstwhile friends, who, if they were men, looked their surprise and spoke pleasantly; if they were women, pretended not to see her, or, having seen her, either looked away or bowed distantly—very distantly. The more unstable their social position the more distant was the bow.

Just at the exit from the Park, her Victoria was stopped by a sudden congestion in the traffic ahead. Preoccupied, she did not notice it until she heard a voice exclaim:

"Why, Stephanie Lorraine!" Gladys Chamberlain in riding togs and crop was at the curb and holding out her hand in greeting. "You dear girl! How do you do?"

"Pretty fit, thank you," Stephanie smiled.

"When did you get back?"

"Several days ago. I'm at my mother's,—if you care to come around."

"Why surely I'll be around, Stephanie—I'd ride back with you now, but I expect to meet my groom here with my mare. Will you be home to-morrow?"

Mrs. Lorraine looked at her intently for an instant.

"Do you appreciate just what you are doing?" she asked.

"Certainly I do—I'm going to visit an old friend—who is a friend still—and always will be, I hope."

Stephanie put out her hand again. "Thank you, Gladys, but I think you ought to know that the Club-house piazza refused to recognize me a few minutes ago."

"I'm not controlled by the Club-house piazza, Stephanie dear," said Miss Chamberlain gently.

"You may be very lonely in your friendship," Stephanie warned. "The only two who spoke to me at the Club were Montague Pendleton and Sheldon Burgoyne—the rest didn't even see me."

"I would bank on Pendleton, and on Burgoyne, too. They are men."

"They came to the front of the house to meet me—assisted me from the carriage—escorted me through the crowd to their table—sat with me—and Montague went back with me and put me in the Victoria. It was a brave thing to do—and I told him so."

"How like Montague Pendleton," said Gladys. "And it was brave too of you to go there and beard the old dowagers and tabbies to their very faces. They can't but respect you for it."

"They are more likely to view it as shameless effrontery," Stephanie answered.

"Let them—they are apt to say anything for a time. Then they will hurt themselves playing follow-my-leader—and trying to distance her."

THE OFFENDER

"Who is the leader?" Stephanie smiled.

"Whoever starts first," said Miss Chamberlain contemptuously. "They're all afraid to commence anything unconventional, but when one ventures they all break after her, and then it's bally-ho! for the race. You've noticed it, surely?"

"I can't say I have—but then I've not been very observant of the dowagers and the tabbies."

"And of course they like you accordingly. Well, who cares? You didn't have to regard them—before, so why regard them now? They'll come around, Stephanie, never fear. If you make the pace as hot as you seem to have made it this afternoon, they'll be along in full cry shortly. Wait until some of their men folks have had their say—there will likely be another thought coming to them then. I've great faith in the men—they prevent us from becoming cats."

A groom rode up leading a spanking bay mare. Touching his hat he dismounted. Miss Chamberlain swung up lightly astride and gathered the reins.

"Until to-morrow morning then—at eleven?" she asked.

"Whenever it suits you," Stephanie smiled.

"I'll be there on the dot," said Gladys—and with a little laugh and a nod she rode away.

Stephanie continued her drive homeward. The way was pleasanter now—she was not alone—Gladys would stand by her—and with Gladys would come others of her old intimates. The first was the hardest—the rest would follow in time, depending on the independence of the individual and the extent and force of the opposition. It might take a year for her to be rehabilitated—for Society to white-wash her or to forget—or it might take only a month. At all events, she was going to try it. She would rather enjoy the struggle—enjoy fighting those who were opposed. She always had despised the conventional ones—those who were afraid—those whose God was Society's good opinion, and who worshipped at the altar of commonplaceness and custom. True she was a false wife, branded so all could see; but she knew that, except for the brand, she was not alone. She was in good company; only, the others were ostensibly regular, while she had broken over and had left no room for doubt nor for exercise of a discretionary blindness. She had been honest about it—she had gone away never to come back, she thought. She had staked herself openly and unreservedly before the whole world, with the intention never to seek for restitution. The others staked nothing unless found out—they broke the seventh commandment with impunity, but discreetly and with due regard for the conventions. And the very ones who were breaking, or had broken it, would be the most frigid to her now. She smiled a bit sarcastically. It was the way of the world, and she knew it years ago, so she had nothing to cry over. They also were doing the conventional and the proper—and looking out for themselves. When she had melted the ice around her sufficiently for them to sail up to her without endangering their own crafts in the floe, they would come promptly and with dispatch. Until then she was aware they would hold off.

When she arrived at home a limousine was standing before the door. Her mother was entertaining a visitor in the piazza-room, and she passed on upstairs.

Presently Mrs. Mourraille entered. She was an older edition of Stephanie, except that her hair was black and her eyes grey—the honest grey that one instinctively trusts and is rarely deceived in. Now they bore the trace of suffering, and her hair was beginning to whiten—had begun during the last year, her intimates observed.

Stephanie arose quickly from the dressing-table, where she had been straightening out her own auburn tresses before the glass, and gliding swiftly over bent and kissed her mother on the cheek.

"Sit here, dearest," she said. "I noticed Mrs. Parsons was with you when I came in, so I didn't stop."

"I saw you," Mrs. Mourraille smiled—"and so did Mrs. Parsons!"

"What did she say?"

"Not a word vocally; but she said many things by her face—chiefly bewilderment and concern."

"Some other faces have shown similarly this afternoon," said Stephanie.

"Did you meet many that you knew on your drive?"

"Yes—I went out to the Country Club—the place was crowded."

"My dear! was it wise?" exclaimed Mrs. Mourraille. "Was it wise, so soon?"

"Judging from the general result, I should say not!" laughed Stephanie. "But it will give them something to talk about the rest of the afternoon, and furnish a topic for dinner. And for that they should be grateful to me."

"My dear!" marvelled her mother.

"Oh, you should have seen the preoccupied air of every woman on the piazza—and there were scores of them there. It was positively chilling."

"Didn't any of them even speak to you?"

"Not one!"

"Who were there?" asked Mrs. Mourraille, her lips tightening.

"Every one in town, I think. It was the regular Saturday afternoon crowd—and then some."

"Did you give them a chance to speak, dear—or did you go haughtily through them, looking neither to right nor to the left?"

"Come to think of it, I went right through them—to a table in the remote corner. However, it made no difference. I might have forced some of them to bow but it would have been a holdup and they would have been justified in taking it out on me afterward. This was the better way. No one can feel hurt—and every one can choose at leisure what she will do."

"Wouldn't it have been wiser to let them choose at leisure, in the first place, rather than to force them to choose quickly, with the chance that they will reverse themselves at leisure?" suggested Mrs. Mourraille kindly.

"You mean that I shouldn't have gone to the Club?—possibly. But I wanted to see—and, as I remarked to Montague Pendleton, I saw."

"Was Montague with you?" exclaimed Mrs. Mourraille.

"He didn't accompany me—he met me at the Club-house—he and Sheldon Burgoyne." And she explained.

Mrs. Mourraille expressed her appreciation of their actions in praiseful terms—then she asked:

"Were any of my particular friends there?"

"It doesn't matter, mother dear. I won't get you into any snarl any further than I've already drawn you."

"Let me determine how far in I shall go," her mother answered quietly. "I simply want the information now—I'll decide later."

Stephanie named them.

"But you must remember, dear," she appended, "that I didn't give them much opportunity even to show a disposition to recognize me. And more of my own friends were there than of yours—and they didn't show any particular eagerness to speak. I can understand their feelings and position. My advent was like a bomb hurled into the crowd. They chose the safest course, which was to sit still and pretend not to see me. I reckon I'd have done the same had I been one of them. They will all come around in time. Gladys Chamberlain has already led off; the rest will follow more or less rapidly—according to disposition or their fear of Society's frown."

She talked rapidly, seeking, for her mother's sake, to make light of her position.

And her mother understood, and smiled in indulgent appreciation. She had been averse to Stephanie's going out that afternoon, even for a drive. She never for an instant had thought of her going to the Club. She wanted her to remain passively at home until her coming had ceased to be the latest wonder; until the talk had died down, and people had got used to the new situation and had decided what they would do. It was a case for slow progress and patient waiting. But Stephanie had ever been impulsive, and a trifle headstrong when the notion seized her. Mrs. Mourraille knew what it meant—she herself had been like Stephanie until she had broken her inclinations to the ways of expediency. There was no utility in crying over what was past. No one regretted her daughter's faux pas more than she, but the business now was to overcome its results and have her start afresh. Assuredly this episode at the Club was not to her idea of the proper style of campaign.

"It is most unfortunate, Stephanie, most unfortunate!" she observed thoughtfully. "Only one thing could be more unfortunate—for you to have met Harry Lorraine there and have had him deny you before them all."

"Then the most unfortunate has happened," Stephanie replied tranquilly. "My husband did meet me on the front piazza—and, before them all, he turned his back upon me and walked away."

"The brute!" cried Mrs. Mourraille.

Then her grey eyes half closed in contemplation, and for a little while she was silent.

Stephanie leisurely brushed her hair and waited.

"Do you think he quite realized what he was doing?" Mrs. Mourraille asked presently.

"I don't know," said Stephanie indifferently. "Moreover, it doesn't matter. It finished me with him utterly. I wouldn't go back to him now if he got down on his knees on the spot, and before all of them implored it. I thought I despised him before; now I'm sure of it—and I hate and loath him beside."

She got up, and crossing to her mother sank down on the floor beside her and took her hands.

"Dearest," she said, "It will all come right some time. I'm glad to be free of Harry Lorraine, though I'm sorry I did what I did with Amherst, for your sake—and a little for my own now. But it is done and it cannot be undone; and we're not given, either of us, to crying over milk that's spilt. Let us be glad rather that I'm quit of Amherst without a—drag.... It wasn't by any fault of his that I am, however. I don't want you to be made to suffer for my folly. I know you can't escape feeling it, but you must not make my quarrel yours. Let me fight it out alone. I'll go away—take an apartment of my own, where I won't weigh you down by my presence, and make your friends shy of you and your house. I'll——"

"My dear little girl, you'll do nothing of the sort," Mrs. Mourraille broke in, kissing the auburn head. "The milk is spilt, as you say—so let us forget it. You don't want Lorraine, so we'll not consider him. We'll consider you, and the future."

"And you!" whispered Stephanie.

"We won't consider me—except indirectly. Whatever is best for you, dear, is best for me. We will fight this out together."

"You sweet mother!" said Stephanie, drawing the dark head down beside her own. "You shall be in reserve; I'll be on the firing line—and I won't let them get through to you."

Her mother smiled in tender clemency.

"I'll be wherever you want me and whenever," she replied.... "We might go away for a time," she suggested.

Stephanie shook her head.

"I'll go if you want very much but it doesn't appeal to me. It will only postpone, by the length of our absence, my restoration to—good standing!" she smiled.

"You wish to stay here?"

"Yes—among my friends—to the end that I may learn who they are."

"You may have some bad quarters-of-an-hour, and receive some shocks beside," her mother cautioned.

"Let them come—I've received enough shocks already to make me immune. It will be amusing, diverting, serve to make the time pass more rapidly."

"My child!" said Mrs. Mourraille kindly. "You don't appreciate just what you are saying."

"I do, mother dear, and what it means also. I have to face it, so I may as well get out of it what I can, and meet it with a smile. I may be wrong, but to my mind there is nothing like indifference for such a situation."

"That is the best way to look at it, if you can—but can you? Can you be philosophical under the slights, and snubs, and bitter tongues?"

"I think I can—at least, I mean to try," said Stephanie quietly. "With Gladys Chamberlain and Pendleton and Burgoyne, I'm not alone. They will stand by me—if I don't offend again.... And you need not fear, dear," answering her mother's look; "I'm not going to Amherst-it again—with any man."

"Have you seen the afternoon papers?" Mrs. Mourraille asked.

"You mean—about Amherst and Mrs. Amherst? No, but Montague told me of it. It's better so—there is only one of us now for Society to get accustomed to. Moreover, his peace is made, and for him the rest is easy."

"It is always easy for the man," Mrs. Mourraille observed.

"Yes—and I can understand: his sin is not so scarlet—it's not continuing, so to speak. Ended it is ended. We women have got used to the social evil in the man, but we can't get used to it in the woman. The ethics of it are a thing apart—good to theorize over, but it is the practical view that controls and will control in my case. I realize that I have nothing to hope for from the equitable argument. I'm a woman—I know what to expect from the women. I'm not blaming them. I've no one but myself to blame. Man and woman may be equal before the law where men are the judges, but they are not equal in Society's Court where women are the judges. I shall get small show there, mother dear, small show there! With rare exceptions we women are cruel and bigoted toward our sex, with all the characteristics of cruelty and bigotry on parade." She kissed the elder very fondly. "Now go or I shall not be dressed for dinner." ... "I suppose," she added, "there won't be any guests."

"Not this evening," her mother answered. "Do you wish me to ask any one—for a time?"

"I wish you to do just as you have always done, ma mère. I'll have my dinner in my room whenever I'm persona non grata to your guests."

Mrs. Mourraille stopped in the doorway and smiled back at Stephanie.

"My guests will meet my daughter or they won't be my guests," she said quietly.

Stephanie, in the mirror of her dressing-table, threw her a kiss.

"No! no!" she said. "But if you don't mind, you might sometime ask Montague Pendleton and Sheldon Burgoyne."

"Together?"

"N—o!" Stephanie hesitated. "I think I'd rather have them apart; at least I would rather have Montague alone—Sheldon doesn't matter."