Short Fiction · A Transaction In Hearts (3/12) (1/2)

II

Claire transplanted took root at once. It was only now and then, in a bow not from the neck but from the waist, in an intonation, in a haphazard phrase, that you divined the foreign-bred girl. A month had not spent itself before she was in possession of a list. Each day was marked by scrawls from people she had met no one knew how or when. In the evening and in the late afternoons the sitting-room of the rectory, a room which Gonfallon in the earliest awkwardness of prosperity had fitted in that lovable Latin fashion which excludes everything but the necessary and inhibits every adornment introduced for ornament’s sake⁠—the bare tableless sitting-room, with its infrequent chairs and pedestalled lamps, was peopled with guests astonished enough to find themselves in so sedate a home. Mrs. Manhattan, on the wing from Newport to New Jersey, had happened in twice, a signal mark of favor from one as socially occupied as she. And with her, or without her, yet inevitably in her train, were other ladies of lesser note⁠—Miss Nevers, for instance, a young woman who had preferences for everybody and attractions for none; Miss Pickett, whom Claire had encountered in that vague region which is known as Abroad; Mrs. Usselex, a parishioner of Gonfallon’s, the bride of a year, more familiarly known as Eden; the Pondirs, mère et fille, recruiting, as usual, for their musicales; Miss Raritan, with whom scandal had been busy and who ignored that scandal as only the virtuous may; the Duchesse de la Dèche, born a Wainwaring, very fetching in her widow’s weeds, now courted, it was rumored, by Mr. Incoul. And with these ladies there was a contingent of men⁠—Dugald Maule, a young lawyer who dreamed of the bench, famous for the art with which he abandoned a sweetheart and preserved her good will; Harry Tandem, a youth of such lively taste in dress that the previous winter on asking Nicholas Manhattan to suggest a costume that he might wear to the Amsterdams’ fancy-ball he had been answered, “Go as you are, Harry; you are fancy enough as it is;” George Rerick, a young man so vacuous of expression that he had been nicknamed It; Trement Yarde, Claire’s fellow-passenger on the voyage over, a scion of the house of Yarde and Company, bankers; and, last and least, Alphabet Jones the novelist.

The sudden infatuation of these people for his sister-in-law was a phenomenon which Christopher Gonfallon was at a loss to explain. Everything about her, the innocence of her eyes, the purity of her lips, the atmosphere which she exhaled, everything, even to the ripple of her laugh, seemed at variance with such as they. That she should be admired was a thing which he accepted as a matter of course: she was, he had already discovered, admirable in manifold respects. But she was not a catch; the recent disasters of her father must have bespattered her not a little; she was not, never had been, and in all probability never would be, in what is colloquially known as the swim; and yet, seemingly, without an effort on her part, a bouquet of the flowers of the upper four was claiming her as its own. Truly he could not make it clear. Now and then on returning to the rectory he had loitered a second at the sitting-room door, surprised at the murmur of voices, the hum of a conversation that seemed to flutter from ear to ear, interrupted, if at all, by a laugh, or the click of a fan furled suddenly; and through it he would catch Claire’s intonation, undulatory yet vibrant as a child’s, and he would see her, behind the teacups, in her face the flush of the rose, in her expression the guilelessness of one too young to be aware of wrong.

Once only, on the impulse of the moment, he had ventured in, but his cloth must have jarred, for immediately there had been an escape, delayed only by Mrs. Manhattan’s superior tact, which had led him into a corner and forced him into platitudes on the subject of the Bond of Hope, a benevolent institution for deserving poor, over which as rector he presided.

Ah, yes, the Bond of Hope was doing famous work. And even as he asserted it he remembered a smothered scandal of the month before⁠—Ah, yes, the Bond of Hope indeed! But as he smiled assuringly he caught in Mrs. Manhattan’s congratulations an inflection which told him she was not the fool she looked; and when Mrs. Manhattan had taken her Directoire coat away and the other visitors had departed, he himself had lingered, refreshed by Claire’s limpid smile, the guilelessness of her face.

Guileless she was⁠—so guileless, so pure and chaste of face and way, that a day or two later, when Gonfallon, outwearied with the effort of setting new thoughts into archaic frames, dropped his pen, determining, if need were, that he would exhume a sermon from the package he had brought from Bronx, the charm was upon him. Already he had discerned in her something of the confidence of a flower, a flexibility which a passing wind might disarray, that innocence which a breath will tarnish and which it was for him who stood quasily in loco parentis to preserve unsullied by the world. For a moment he pondered on the possibility of mating her to some earnest young cleric, Mr. Qualms, for instance, one of his own assistants, a recent graduate of Trinity, a sturdy servant of Christ who possessed a look of feverish determination and trousers that bagged at the knee. Yet, somehow, the idea seemed incongruous and unpleasant; this thought took a tangential flight, and he fell to musing as to what Claire could have in common with her guests and they with her.

So far as the feminine element was concerned, little there was to be said. Mrs. Manhattan was indeed a butterfly of fashion⁠—rather mature and stout, but still a butterfly⁠—yet did she not each Sunday occupy a pew that fronted the pulpit, under the very drippings of the sanctuary as were, and was not her husband warden of the church? Miss Nevers, he understood, had been taxed with inconsequences; but society he knew to be censorious. Besides, was she not the originator of the Girls’ Friendly Aid Association?⁠—and, moreover, when after some sudden peroration he had extended his arm, with that gesture with which all New York was familiar, and asked the congregation, as though it embodied a unit, Are you one of those miserable sinners? he had watched Miss Nevers and marked that not so much as an eyelid had quivered at the taunt. With Miss Pickett no fault whatever could be found: her attendance at communion had the exactitude of an eclipse. And so far as the duchess was concerned, albeit on marrying a Frenchman she had renounced the Episcopal Church, was there not, poor, errant lamb, a chance of winning her back to the fold?

But of the men he was by no means so sure. Jones, certainly, apart from the ribaldry of his fiction and a mania he had for collecting plots, was harmless as a strawberry festival, and an old friend to boot. Maule was of a different class: he had a coarse mouth, and his reputation was sour. Rerick was not a bit better. Tandem he dismissed with an epithet⁠—popinjay. But Yarde detained his thoughts. Concerning him he had obtained information⁠—information which the young man’s appearance refuted, for he was fragrant, colorful, and grateful to the eye, evidence, however, which Gonfallon was not inclined to accept in his favor. And in declining he was logical; for if Satan be not seductive how can he ever enthrall?

As he thought of Yarde his perplexity increased. He was welcomed from one end of Fifth Avenue to the other. Outwardly he was not ill-behaved, a little effeminate perhaps, but not actually offensive, and yet about him was an atmosphere which Gonfallon could not breathe. It seemed to him that beneath the affectations of a peacock he concealed the beak and talons of a bird of prey⁠—the sort of man that ought to have the danger-signal hoisted wheresoever he went. But still, if Claire chose to receive him, what manner of complaint could be made? Because he himself happened to be of the cloth there was little reason why he should expect his wife’s sister to be exclusive as a nun. Were the girl under any other roof than his own, no form of remonstrance could be voiced. Nevertheless he felt that some remonstrance should be forthcoming. That afternoon he had seen Yarde’s brougham at the door; he had seen it there the day previous, and the day before that. He felt vexed at Claire, at himself⁠—the more so, perhaps, in that he was unable to put his finger on the exact cause of the vexation and display it guardian-wise to her. The only plank that drifted to him seemed to inhibit speech. Claire was so evidently innocent-minded that did he venture to warn her, either she would not understand, in which case explanations would be impossible, or in comprehending she might feel herself aggrieved. In consequence, but one course seemed open to him⁠—to speak to Ruth and ask her to catechise the girl in his stead.

Despite the lancinating neuralgia which imprisoned her for days at a stretch, Ruth preserved the disposition of a sundial: it was only serene hours of which she took count. There was nothing dolent in her tone; her manner, if languider than before, was unwarped by pain. About her husband, the parish, everything in fact, down to the minutiae of domestic economy, she was still alert. The servants adored her. In moments when the agony of her temples was acute enough to turn each individual hair above them red, when a pang would scatter through the cheekbones, loiter under the teeth, and then distend in zigzags and spirals through every nerve of the face, a moan might come from her, but never a complaint. Dr. McMasters, who attended her⁠—a physician who had passed his prime among the poor, and whom the resuscitation of a stockjobber encountered by chance had lifted from the purlieus of Abingdon Square to the precincts of Fifth Avenue⁠—expressed full confidence in her recovery; but meanwhile he marvelled not alone at her self-control, but at the solicitude which she was able to maintain in those of his indigent patients whom he had not the heart to abandon, and whose sufferings, if less acute than her own, poverty rendered more poignant. In these, as in many others, Ruth’s interest was unrelaxing, and her assistance life. While as to her pleasures, the which indeed had become scanty of late, the greatest, the uniquest of all was the touch of her husband’s hand. To her he was always the perfect lover whose charm had won her heart and the attention of all New York. She was proud of him as only a woman can be whose love has idealized a man into something more than flesh. And when, with the selfishness of those who know themselves adored, he would come to her in some momentary depression, it was joy to her to encourage him anew. To her individualism rarely an allusion did she make, and then so casually that you would have thought her discussing the momentary malaise of some stranger whose indisposition rumor had brought to her, or else so hopefully that you expected on the morrow to find her with health restored. Indeed, she was self-abnegatory, fretting only at the imprisonment which kept her from her husband’s side, supervising from her chair everything, even to the coal in the cellar, and in her darkened room clairvoyant as a nyctalope and weariless in thoughts and devices for him.

And this evening as he entered the room, “Chris!” she murmured, “it is so good of you!”

In her smile, in her gesture, in the expression which her lips took on, there was an ambient gratitude, a welcome, and a delight.

“You are better, are you not?”

“All day I thought if I could only get away from the pain; but see, you come, and the wish is fulfilled. Yes, I am better now. And you? Were you at the Bond today?”

“I was; and as I came from it I saw Yarde’s brougham at the door. What does Claire have him for?”

“Really, Chris, it is not her fault. He insists on coming. But if you object I will speak to her.”

“It is she that should object, not you, nor I.”

“Yes, Chris, it is for us. Claire!⁠—why, she is a child yet: anyone can see that. Besides, she does not like him: she told me so.”

“H’m! she has an odd way of showing it, then.”

“Do you know, Chris, she really does dislike him? When she met him in Paris, she was taken, oh! just a little, as a girl might be⁠—it appears that there are no young men in Paris⁠—and so, as he seemed nice and agreeable, she was a little flattered, and, I suppose, just a little bit pleased as well. It is so easy to please a young girl! Well, from what she told me, he did not act right. He met Miss Pickett, Claire even introduced him, and then, how ever it came about I don’t know, but the attention which he had previously given to Claire he bestowed on her friend. He sees his mistake now, that is evident; but Claire will have none of him.”

“She has him here every day.”

“Chris, really, I think she hates him. She admitted as much the other night. When he comes here she snubs him. On the ship she was barely civil.”

“He hasn’t enough reputation to last overnight. Jones told me any number of things about him. It is an outrage that he should pursue her here. As for hating him, that’s all stuff and nonsense: she is too sweet-tempered to hate anyone. Besides, even if she did, it would only show that she was dead in love with him.”

“That is not like you, to be cynical.” And into Ruth’s face a sudden sadness came.

“There, sweetheart, forgive me. I am irritated today. I would not vex you: you know that. I will speak to Claire myself.” As he spoke, he took her hand in his, and Ruth, comforted by the caress and by the title, smiled anew.

“Yes, Chris, speak to her; and I will speak to her too.”

For a while husband and wife sat together, discussing matters of common interest, the illness of the bishop, the condition of Ruth’s father, the possibility that before the winter set in she herself would be able to assume the duties in the sphere to which she had been called; and when at last he rose to go, she declared that every ill had vanished. When a woman loves a man, his mere presence is a tonic.

As Gonfallon descended the stair, however, his thoughts were not of his wife. The brougham which had stood before the rectory that afternoon had in departing carried his fancy afar. It had roamed in and out of the possibilities of that young man’s career, and it had not roamed with approval.

According to Jones, Trement Yarde was hardly such an one as a young girl should know. Among women he had the reputation of a freebooter; the men, Jones asserted, were more lenient. But, then, are not men always that? Provided their own family be secure from attack, at deeds of a certain kind they were apt to wink, and approvingly too. Moreover, though the young man had a number of zeros behind him, those zeros were fronted with figures. The house of Yarde and Co. was, with that of Usselex, foremost in the Street. Of course the men were lenient⁠—and the women as well. Gonfallon was not a fool. He knew that everything, virtue, genius, beauty⁠—everything can be talked away, but never wealth. He had not lived under the shadow of the Bleeckers for nothing. But now, as he descended the stair, even that was forgot. One thing was present with him⁠—his antipathy to Yarde, and the warning he must give. That young man, he decided, might disport himself wheresoever he listed, but Claire he should not approach. And with this decision, to which, since his conversation with Ruth, he made certain the girl would concur, he entered the room where she sat.

Claire was lounging on one of those sofas in which the occupant can fall asleep without being preached to. At Gonfallon’s entrance she looked up, and a book which she held fell from her. Her head was on one cushion and her feet on another.