The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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"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, ships passing to the sea; and in mid-stream an
anchored island of steel painted white and buff, bristling with long
thin guns, the flower-like flag rippling astern; another battle-ship
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 noble 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 dickens 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.

The girl coloured with pleasure, resting pensively above the key-board;
but he had no further requests to make and presently she swung around on
the piano-stool, looking at him.

"You sing all right; you are doing your part--as far as I can discover."

"There is nothing for you to discover that I have not told you," she
said gravely. In her manner there was a subdued dignity which he had
noticed recently--something of the self-confidence of the very young and
unspoiled--which, considering all things, he could not exactly account
for.

"Does that doddering old dancing-master of yours behave himself?"

"Yes--since you spoke to him. Mr. Bulder came to the school again."

"What did you say to him?"

"I told him that you wouldn't let me sing in 'The Inca.'"

"And what did Bulder say?"

"He was persistent but perfectly respectful; asked if he might confer
with you. He wrote to you I think, didn't he?"

Malcourt nodded and lighted a cigarette.

"Dolly," he said, "do you want to sing _Chaske_ in 'The Inca' next
winter?"

"Yes, I do--if you think it is all right." She added in a low voice: "I
want to do what will please you, Louis."

"I don't know whether it's the best thing to do, but--you may have to."
He laid his cigarette in a saucer, watched the smoke curling
ceilingward, and said as though to himself:

"I should like to be certain that you can support yourself--within a
reasonable time from now--say a year. That is all, Dolly."

"I can do it now if you wish it--" The expression of his face checked
her.

"I don't mean a variety career devoted to 'mother' songs," he said with
a sneer. "There's a middle course between diamonds and 'sinkers.' You'll
get there if you don't kick over the traces.... Have you made any more
friends?"

"Yes."

"Are they respectable?"

"Yes," she said, colouring.

"Has anybody been impertinent?"

"Mr. Williams."

"I'll attend to him--the little squirt!... Who are your new friends?"

"There's a perfectly sweet girl in the French class, Marguerite Barret.
I think she likes me.... Louis, I don't believe you understand how very
happy I am beginning to be--"

"Do people come here?"

"Yes, on Sunday afternoons; I know nearly a dozen nice girls now, and
those men I told you about--Mr. Snyder, Mr. Jim Anthony and his brother
the artist, and Mr. Cass and Mr. Renwick."

"You can cut out Renwick," he said briefly.

She seemed surprised. "He has always been perfectly nice to me,
Louis--"

"Cut him out, Dolly. I know the breed."

"Of course, if you wish."

He looked at her, convinced in spite of himself. "Always ask me about
people. If I don't know I can find out."

"I always do," she said.

"Yes, I believe you do.... You're all right, Dolly--so far.... There,
don't look at me in that distressed-dove fashion; I _know_ you are all
right and mean to be for your own sake--"

"For yours also," she said.

"Oh--that's all right, too--story-book fidelity; my preserver
ever!--What?--Sure--and a slow curtain.... There, there, Dolly--where's
your sense of humour! Good Lord, what's changing you into a
bread-and-butter boarding-school sentimentalist!--to feel hurt at
nothing! Hello! look at that kitten of yours climbing your silk
curtains! Spank the rascal!"

But the girl caught up the kitten and tucked it up under her chin,
smiling across at Malcourt, who had picked up his hat, gloves, and
stick.

"Will you come to-morrow?" she asked.

"I'm going away for a while."

Her face fell; she rose, placed the kitten on the lounge, and walked up
to him, both hands clasped loosely behind her back, wistfully
acquiescent.

"It's going to be lonely again for me," she said.

"Nonsense! You've just read me your visiting list--"

"I had rather have you here than anybody."

"Dolly, you'll get over that absurd sense of obligatory regard for
me--"

"I had _rather_ have you, Louis."

"I know. That's very sweet of you--and very proper.... You are all
right.... I'll be back in a week or ten days, and," smilingly, "mind you
have your report ready! If you've been a good girl we'll talk over 'The
Inca' again and--perhaps--we'll have Mr. Bulder up to luncheon....
Good-bye."

She gave him her hand, looking up into his face.

"Smile!" he insisted.

She smiled.

So he went away, rather satiated with the pleasures of self-denial; but
the lightly latent mockery soon broke out again in a smile as he reached
the street.

"What a mess!" he grinned to himself. "The Tressilvains at Portlaw's!
And Wayward! and Shiela and Virginia and that awful Louis Malcourt! It
only wants Hamil to make the jolliest little hell of it. O my, O my,
what an amusing mess!"

However, he knew what Portlaw didn't know, that Virginia would never
accept that invitation, and that neither Wayward nor Constance Palliser
would remain one day under the roof that harboured the sister of Louis
Malcourt.

CHAPTER XXV

A CONFERENCE

When Malcourt arrived at Luckless Lake Sunday evening he found Portlaw
hunched up in an arm-chair, all alone in the living-room, although the
hour was still early.

"Where's your very agreeable house-party?" he inquired, looking about
the empty room and hall with an air of troubled surprise.

"Gone to bed," replied Portlaw irritably,--"what's left of 'em." And he
continued reading "The Pink 'Un."

"Really!" said Malcourt in polite concern.

"Yes, really!" snapped Portlaw. "Mrs. Ascott went to Pride's and took
Wayward and Constance Palliser; that was Friday. And Gray and Cecile
joined them yesterday. It's been a horrible house-party; nobody had any
use for anybody else and it has rained every day and--and--to be plain
with you, Louis, nobody is enchanted with your relatives and that's the
unpleasant truth!"

"I don't blame anybody," returned Malcourt sincerely, removing his
driving-gloves and shaking off his wet box-coat. "Why, I can scarcely
stand them myself, William. Where are they?"

"In the west wing of your house--preparing to remain indefinitely."

"Dear, dear!" exclaimed Malcourt. "What on earth shall we do?" And he
peered sideways at Portlaw with his tongue in his cheek.

"Do? _I_ don't know. Why the devil did you suggest that they stop at
your house?"

"Because, William, curious as it may seem, I had a sort of weak-minded
curiosity to see my sister once more." He walked over to the table, took
a cigarette and lighted it, then stood regarding the burning match in
his fingers. "She's the last of the family; I'll probably never see her
again--"

"She appears to be in excellent health," remarked Portlaw viciously.

"So am I; but--" He shrugged and tossed the embers of the match onto the
hearth.

"But what?"

"Well, I'm going to take a vacation pretty soon--a sort of voyage, and a
devilish long one, William. That's why I wanted to see her again."

"You mean to tell me you are going away?" demanded the other
indignantly.

Malcourt laughed. "Oh, yes. I planned it long ago--one morning toward
daybreak years ago.... A--a relative of mine started on the same voyage
rather unexpectedly.... I've heard very often from him since; I'm
curious to try it, too--when he makes up his mind to invite me--"

"When are you starting?" interrupted Portlaw, disgusted.

"Oh, not for a while, I think. I won't embarrass you; I'll leave
everything in ship-shape--"

"_Where_ are you going?--dammit!"

Malcourt looked at him humorously, head on one side. "I am not perfectly
sure, dear friend. I hate to know all about a thing before I do it.
Otherwise there's no sporting interest in it."

"You mean to tell me that you're going off a-gipsying without any
definite plans?"

"Gipsying?" he laughed. "Well, that may perhaps describe it. I don't
know; I have no plans. That's the charm of it. When one grows tired,
that is the restful part of it--to simply start, having no plans; just
to leave, and drift away haphazard. One is always bound to arrive
somewhere, William."

He had been pacing backward and forward, the burning cigarette balanced
between his fingers, turning his handsome head from time to time to
answer Portlaw's ill-tempered questions. Now he halted, dark eyes roving
about the room. They fell and lingered on a card-table where some empty
glasses decorated the green baize top.

"Bridge?" he queried.

"Unfortunately," growled Portlaw.

"Who?"

"Mrs. Malcourt and I versus your--ah--talented family."

"Mrs. Malcourt doesn't gamble."

"Tressilvain and I did."

"Were you badly stung, dear friend?"

Portlaw muttered.

Malcourt lifted his expressive eyebrows.

"Why didn't you try my talented relative again to-night?"

"Mrs. Malcourt had enough," said Portlaw briefly; then mumbled something
injuriously unintelligible.

"I think I'll go over to the house and see if my gifted brother-in-law
has retired," said Malcourt, adding carelessly, "I suppose Mrs. Malcourt
is asleep."

"It wouldn't surprise me," replied Portlaw. And Malcourt was free to
interpret the remark as he chose.

He went away thoughtfully, crossing the lawn in the rainy darkness, and
came to the garden where his own dogs barked at him--a small thing to
depress a man, but it did; and it was safer for the dogs, perhaps, that
they sniffed recognition before they came too near with their growls and
barking. But he opened the gate, disdaining to speak to them, and when
they knew him, it was a pack of very humble, wet, and penitent hounds
that came wagging up alongside. He let them wag unnoticed.

Lights burned in his house, one in Shiela's apartments, several in the
west wing where the Tressilvains were housed. A servant, locking up for
the night, came across the dripping veranda to admit him; and he went
upstairs and knocked at his wife's door.

Shiela's maid opened, hesitated; and a moment later Shiela appeared,
fully dressed, a book in her hand. It was one of Hamil's architectural
volumes.

"Well, Shiela," he said lightly; "I got in to-night and rather expected
to see somebody; but nobody waited up to see me! I'm rather wet--it's
raining--so I won't trouble you. I only wanted to say good night."

The quick displeasure in her face died out. She dismissed the maid, and
came slowly forward. Beneath the light her face looked much thinner; he
noticed dark shadows under the eyes; the eyes themselves seemed tired
and expressionless.

"Aren't you well?" he asked bluntly.

"Perfectly.... Was it you the dogs were so noisy about just now?"

"Yes; it seems that even my own dogs resent my return. Well--good night.
I'm glad you're all right."

Something in his voice, more than in the words, arrested her listless
attention.

"Will you come in, Louis?"

"I'm afraid I'm keeping you awake. Besides I'm wet--"

"Come in and tell me where you've been--if you care to. Would you like
some tea--or something?"

He shook his head, but followed her into the small receiving-room. There
he declined an offered chair.

"I've been in New York.... No, I did not see your family.... As for what
I've been doing--"

Her lifted eyes betrayed no curiosity; a growing sense of depression
crept over him.

"Oh, well," he said, "it doesn't matter." And turned toward the door.

She looked into the empty fireplace with a sigh; then, gently, "I don't
mean to make it any drearier for you than I can help."

He considered her a moment.

"Are you really well, Shiela?"

"Why, yes; only a little tired. I do not sleep well."

He nodded toward the west wing of the house.

"Do _they_ bother you?"

She did not answer.

He said: "Thank you for putting them up. We'll get rid of them if they
annoy you."

"They are quite welcome."

"That's very decent of you, Shiela. I dare say you have not found them
congenial."

"We have nothing in common. I think they consider me a fool."

"Why?" He looked up, keenly humourous.

"Because I don't understand their inquiries. Besides, I don't gamble--"

"What kind of inquiries do they make?"

"Personal ones," she said quietly.

He laughed. "They're probably more offensively impertinent than the
Chinese--that sort of Briton. I think I'll step into the west wing and
greet my relations. I won't impose them on you for very long. Do you
know when they are going?"

"I think they have made plans to remain here for a while."

"Really?" he sneered. "Well, leave that to me, Shiela."

So he crossed into the western wing and found the Tressilvains
tete-a-tete over a card-table, deeply interested in something that
resembled legerdemain; and he stood at the door and watched them with a
smile that was not agreeable.

"Well, Helen!" he said at last; and Lady Tressilvain started, and her
husband rose to the full height of his five feet nothing, dropping the
pack which he had been so nimbly manipulating for his wife's amusement.

"Where the devil did you come from?" blurted his lordship; but his wife
made a creditable appearance in her role of surprised sisterly
affection; and when the two men had gone through the form of family
greeting they all sat down for the conventional family confab.

Tressilvain said little but drank a great deal of whisky--his long,
white, bony fingers were always spread around his glass--unusually long
fingers for such a short man, and out of all proportion to the scant
five-foot frame, topped with a little pointed head, in which the eyes
were set exactly as glass eyes are screwed into the mask of a fox.

"Bertie and I have been practising leads from trick hands," observed
Lady Tressilvain, removing the ice from her glass and filling it from a
soda bottle which Malcourt uncorked for her.

"Well, Herby," said Malcourt genially, "I suppose you and Helen play a
game well worth--ah--watching."

Tressilvain looked dully annoyed, although there was nothing in his
brother-in-law's remark to ruffle anybody, except that his lordship did
not like to be called Herby. He sat silent, caressing his glass; and
presently his little black eyes stole around in Malcourt's direction,
and remained there, waveringly, while brother and sister discussed the
former's marriage, the situation at Luckless Lake, and future prospects.

That is to say, Lady Tressilvain did the discussing; Malcourt, bland,
amiable, remained uncommunicatively polite, parrying everything so
innocently that his sister, deceived, became plainer in her questions
concerning the fortune he was supposed to have married, and more
persistent in her suggestions of a winter in New York--a delightful and
prolonged family reunion, in which the Tressilvains were to figure as
distinguished guests and virtual pensioners of everybody connected with
his wife's family.

"Do you think," drawled Malcourt, intercepting a furtive glance between
his sister and brother-in-law, to that gentleman's slight confusion, "do
you think it might prove interesting to you and Herby? Americans are so
happy to have your countrymen to entertain--particularly when their
credentials are as unquestionable as Herby's and yours."

For a full minute, in strained silence, the concentrated gaze of the
Tressilvains was focused upon the guileless countenance of Malcourt;
and discovered nothing except a fatuous cordiality.

Lady Tressilvain drew a deep, noiseless breath and glanced at her
husband.

"I don't understand, Louis, exactly what settlement--what sort of
arrangement you made when you married this--very interesting young
girl--"

"Oh, I didn't have anything to endow her with," said Malcourt, so
amiably stupid that his sister bit her lip.

Tressilvain essayed a jest.

"Rather good, that!" he said with his short, barking laugh; "but I
da'say the glove was on the other hand, eh, Louis?"

"What?"

"Why the--ah--the lady did the endowing and all that, don't you see?"

"See what?" asked Malcourt so pleasantly that his sister shot a look at
her husband which checked him.

Malcourt was now on maliciously humourous terms with himself; he began
to speak impulsively, affectionately, with all the appearance of a
garrulous younger brother impatient to unbosom himself to his family;
and he talked and talked, confidingly, guilelessly, voluminously, yet
managed to say absolutely nothing. And, strain their ears as they might,
the Tressilvains in their perplexity and increasing impatience could
make out nothing of all this voluntary information--understand
nothing--pick out not one single fact to satisfy their desperately
hungry curiosity.

There was no use interrupting him with questions; he answered them with
others; he whispered ambiguities in a manner most portentous; hinted at
bewildering paradoxes with an air; nodded mysterious nothings, and
finally left them gaping at him, exasperated, unable to make any sense
out of what most astonishingly resembled a candid revelation of the
hopes, fears, ambitions, and worldly circumstances of Louis Malcourt.

"Good-night," he said, lingering at the door to look upon and enjoy the
fruit of his perversity and malice. "When I start on that journey I
mentioned to you I'll leave something for you and Herby--merely to show
you how much I think of my own people--a little gift--a trifle!
No--no!"--lifting his hand with smiling depreciation as Tressilvain
began to thank him. "One must look out for one's own family. It's
natural--only natural to make some provision. Good-night, Helen!
Good-night, Herby. Portlaw and I will take you on at Bridge if it rains
to-morrow. It will be a privilege for us to--ah--watch your
game--closely. Good-night!"

And closed the door.

"What the devil does he mean?" demanded Tressilvain, peering sideways at
his wife.

"I don't exactly know," she said thoughtfully, sorting the cards. She
added: "If we play to-morrow you stick to signals; do you understand?
And keep your ring and your fingers off the cards until I can make up my
mind about my brother. You're a fool to drink American whisky the way
you did yesterday. Mr. Portlaw noticed the roughness on the aces; you
pricked them too deep. You'd better keep your wits about you, I can tell
you. I'm a Yankee myself."

"Right--O! But I say, Helen, I'm damned if I make out that brother of
yours. Doesn't he live in the same house as his wife?"

Lady Tressilvain sat listening to the uproar from the dogs as Malcourt
left the garden. But this time the outbreak was only a noisy welcome;
and Malcourt, on excellent terms with himself, patted every sleek, wet
head thrust up for caresses and walked gaily on through the driving
rain.

The rain continued the following day. Piloted by Malcourt, the
Tressilvains, thickly shod and water-proofed, tramped about with rod and
creel and returned for luncheon where their blunt criticisms on the
fishing aroused Portlaw's implacable resentment. For they sneered at the
trout, calling them "char," patronised the rather scanty pheasantry,
commented on the kennels, stables, and gardens in a manner that brought
the red into Portlaw's face and left him silent while luncheon lasted.

After luncheon Tressilvain tried the billiards, but found the game
inferior to the English game. So he burrowed into a box of cigars,
established himself before the fire with all the newspapers, deploring
the fact that the papers were not worth reading.

Lady Tressilvain cornered Shiela and badgered her and stared at her
until she dared not lift her hot face or open her lips lest the pent
resentment escape; Portlaw smoked a pipe--a sure indication of
smouldering wrath; Malcourt, at a desk, blew clouds of smoke from his
cigarette and smilingly continued writing to his attorney:

"This is the general idea for the document, and it's up to you to
fix it up and make it legal, and have it ready for me when I come
to town.

"1st. I want to leave all my property to a Miss Dorothy or Dolly
Wilming; and I want you to sell off everything after my death and
invest the proceeds for her because it's all she'll have to live
on except what she gets by her own endeavours. This, in case I
suddenly snuff out.

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