Short Fiction · A Transaction In Hearts (10/12) (1/2)

IX

“Did you ever see a ventriloquist? The ventriloquist speaks, a mannequin answers. The questions are so adroit, the answers so natural, that everyone, even to the mannequin, thinks that the dialogue is real. Such, Miss Raritan, is love⁠—a duo in which one of the vocalists grimaces while the other sings for two.”

“Mr. Jones, I knew your wit was copyrighted, I did not know it was profound.”

For centrepiece that evening the dinner-table had blue lilies afloat in a silver pond. About it were a handful of people, a dozen or fourteen at most, who had assembled at the bidding of Mrs. Manhattan partly to greet Mrs. Jerold Fox, a lady who some years before had deserted New York for the allurements of Paris and the Mediterranean coast, and partly to enjoy the primeur of a bishop en herbe. Mrs. Manhattan, be it said, was just the person to do things by halves.

And there, at the hostess’s right, as Gonfallon, expressing in eye and in mien the indulgence which comes of dishes perfectly served, sat listening to the conversation that fluttered about him, attentive the while to Mrs. Manhattan, affecting even to chide her for a jest which she had invented for the evening and which consisted in bestowing on him the title of Lord which the English give to their bishops, it was apparent that he was at peace with the world.

The episcopate, indeed, was not yet his, but during the fortnight that had elapsed since the terrible journey from Bronx, many things had happened which pointed directly to him as its future possessor. Moreover, the nightmare which Bucholz induced had vanished as abruptly as it had come. An anonymous benefactor, one whom Bucholz fancied to be none other than Gonfallon, had sent him the amount in time. And that anonymous benefactor, whom, in the earliest perplexity which beset them when Gonfallon on the evening of his return from Bronx learned from Bucholz’ own lips that the money had been brought to him and Bucholz learned from Gonfallon that he knew nothing of the sender, that anonymous benefactor, at first unimaginable as Abistek, they ultimately decided must surely be Jerolomon, and, presto! in the eyes of both, the vampire changed to a dove.

Relieved of this burden, Gonfallon had returned to Bronx, departing only when the grave had closed and the last rite had been performed, but not, however, before his old parishioners, radiating in the presence of the now famous cleric who once had been their own, had insisted on his delivering one of his spiritual harangues again. Then, the dust of Bronx barely shaken from him, his mother had been taken ill, and he had been forced to journey to the prim Massachusettsian village in which she dwelt, and to linger there until through an unexpected turn in the malady his mother had been declared out of danger and he was suffered to return to his pastorate in town. Meanwhile, he had caught but infrequent glimpses of Claire; indeed, during his absence such a mass of duties had accumulated, so many parochial matters demanded his attention, that until this evening he had had barely a moment which he could call his own.

But now as he sat at his hostess’s right, interrupting the conversation that fluttered about him now with one of those pleasantries which the popular divine can permit himself, now interjecting some apposite sally⁠—sounding as he did so that resonant accent with which his famous phrase, “Religion, not politics, is the nation’s soul,” had been fired point-blank at the President⁠—he looked once again a maker of songs and of laws and every inch a prelate. With Bucholz inoffensive and the bishopric full in sight, he could well afford to be himself. It was good to smile, and his smile was contagious. There was but one thing that jarred.

On the opposite side of the table, at the farther end, between Mrs. Fox and Miss Raritan, Jones was seated, his recent mourning noticeable only in two microscopic studs of onyx, or of sapphire, the which, parenthetically, give the same effect. On the other side of Miss Raritan was Trement Yarde, and next to him was Claire. To Nicholas Manhattan, the gentlest yet the most easily bored of men⁠—and to whomsoever else would listen⁠—Mrs. Fox was relating a few of her triumphs. Her conversation, such of it at least as reached Gonfallon’s ear, was a glittering spangle of noble names. During her sojourn abroad, seemingly with no one of lesser degree than a baronet had she ever exchanged a word. Her speech was striated with foreign idioms, and occasionally she lapsed wholly into French.

But it was not Mrs. Fox that jarred on Gonfallon: it was Claire and Yarde. From the first, through one of those illogical processes which often hold the core of logic itself, Gonfallon had detested the young fellow; everything about him, from the part of his hair to the soles of his St. James Street shoes⁠—everything, even to the trick he had of contemplating his fingertips, was antipathetic in the extreme. Later, when Yarde had become a visitor at the rectory, haunting it as it were with his unwelcome presence, the antipathy had changed to detestation; and now that he was talking to Claire, and talking to her moreover in a voice so modulated that no one save the girl herself could hear him, Gonfallon’s detestation addled into rage. For the moment he pitied the girl, and sorrowed for her that she should have for neighbor a man she loathed. But suddenly his pity was shot with wonder, his anger with surprise. During the early part of the meal Claire had chatted amiably enough to the man seated between Mrs. Manhattan and herself, and Yarde had delivered himself up to the fascinations of Miss Raritan. But now the conversation had changed, and Yarde was devoting himself to Claire.

That the former should address the girl whom he had taken in to dinner was a thing which, however objectionable in the abstract, was in the circumstances perfectly proper. Indeed, Gonfallon told himself that although Claire in that conversation which he had overheard had snubbed the fellow right roundly, still the dinner-table of a third person must and should interrupt the continuity of a quarrel subsisting between a man and a woman whom the hostess has placed side by side. And now, in spite of that snubbing, did Yarde not address Claire, and did Claire not respond, it would be unmannerly of the one and unseemly of the other. Platitudes are easy of utterance, and the weather, however beastly, has never caused a shipwreck yet.

But as Gonfallon watched them it was clear to him that no exchange of commonplaces was taking place. When he had last seen the two together, Claire’s attitude had been that of an insulted princess, in her voice had been a threat; now disdain had vanished; where the menace had been was now a smile. On her part the transformation was greater than any regard for the proprieties demanded; while as for Yarde, in place of the sulk of a whipped spaniel there had come an air of confidence which was insolent to a degree. Through some jugglery which Gonfallon felt himself incompetent to fathom, he seemed to be engaged in filching from him a thing which after⁠—nay, with⁠—the episcopate was more precious than all things else. And at this jugglery, at this open pillage of his own chattels, conventionality compelled him to assist, inhibiting him even from so much as warning the marauder off, and demanding that he should laugh, that he should jest, that his flow of small-talk should not tarry.

“Don’t you agree with me, doctor?”

In the little drama Gonfallon played the hero’s role. Of the jealousy which had sprung into being within him, that jealousy which spends itself not in a scene but in a crime, of the revulsion of feeling, of the anger and surprise, he gave no outward sign; not an eyelid had twitched, not a muscle of his face had altered. His observations, however long in the telling, had in reality not outlasted a moment; and Mrs. Manhattan, who had been expressing her views on some subject which was doubtless of importance, never dreamed that the guest who appeared to be giving her his fullest attention had in that moment traversed the world, unconscious of her presence, deaf to her speech.

“Perfectly, my dear Mrs. Manhattan,” he answered. “I agree with you in every respect.”

From the other end of the table came the falsetto laugh which Mrs. Fox used as fanfare to sound the retreat of some noble personage from her speech. She was in great good spirits, and looked around, for admiration perhaps, at Jones. Presumably she had been informed of his calling, one which doubtless was to her incompatible with the usages of the selectest set, for over the oysters she had ignored him entirely, over the roast she had given him a glance which she was prepared on the instant to bestow on someone else. But with the sweets she was surprised into remarking that he looked enough like the secretary of the Austrian Legation to be that gentleman’s brother.

“Who did you say he was?” she asked of her host.

“I call him Alphabet,” Manhattan answered, “but his name is Chisolm-Jones.”

“Not a nephew of Madame de Cinq-Cygne?”

“Her nephew.”

The questions and answers Gonfallon garnered unconsciously. He was in the cerebral condition of a chess-player whom the remark of a bystander addressed during the absorption of the game reaches only when the move is made. Do what he might, his attention was centred on Claire; and through that attention filtered the conversation of the other guests.

Miss Raritan was talking across the table, praising Massenet and the inspiration which that composer displays. Mrs. Manhattan had turned to the man on her left. For the moment both Claire and Yarde were silent. Mrs. Fox was captivating Jones.

“And that dear countess! How is she?”

“Better than she has been for some time,” Jones answered. “She is dead.”

“I am so glad,” Mrs. Fox rejoined: it was evident that only the initial sentence had reached her. “I am so glad. There are few whom I have known⁠—among my own compatriots, of course⁠—who speak French as well as she. Do you know, it is really difficult for me now to accustom myself to my own tongue? You must have experienced the same thing yourself.”

“Often, Mrs. Fox.”

“I was sure of it. Nous autres, n’est-ce pas? Mais tout le monde parle Français maintenant. Figurez-vous qu’à Cannes, l’hiver passé, j’étais vraiment étonnée de trouver ma langue dans la bouche du Prince de Galles!”

“Son Altesse aussi sans doute,” Jones answered, with a sniff.

“What do you think of her?” asked Miss Raritan, in a whisper.

“Fox et praeterea nihil,” he replied; a jest which the young lady did not wholly grasp, but at which, as was her wont, she smiled approvingly.

“And now, do tell me,” Mrs. Fox continued⁠—“you know I have been away so long⁠—what is the last scandal?”

“The last scandal? Let me see.” And the novelist seemed to meditate. “Ah, yes. You remember Mrs. Gwathmeys, don’t you?”

“Cynthia Van Dam that was?”

“Exactly. Well, the other day her husband picked her pocket.”

“Mr. Chisolm-Jones!”

“You don’t understand. It was a pleasantry on his part. He saw a bit of paper peeping out of her bodice, and snatched it from her.”

“You said her pocket.”

“Isn’t a bodice a woman’s pocket? However, Gwathmeys seized the paper, and suddenly he cried, ‘What is this? My love, my chosen, but not mine, I send my whole heart to you in these words I write.⁠—Who is it wrote that?’ ‘Owen Meredith,’ his wife answered.”

“The shameless thing!” interjected Mrs. Fox.

“ ‘I will kill him!’ shouted Gwathmeys.” As Jones spoke he imitated the voice of an ogre in a fairytale.

“And quite right, too.”

“As you say.”

“And did he?”

But Jones’s answer was lost. Mrs. Manhattan had moved, and at that signal her guests rose from the table. When the men, after accompanying the womenfolk into the drawing room, returned for coffee and liqueurs, the novelist seemed absorbed. He took little part in the conversation, and, until his host suggested that it might be well to join the ladies, he sat now puffing at a huge cigar, now flicking the ashes on the floor.

The drawing room which they then entered, the smallest of the three which the house contained, was so cunningly furnished with everything that you would have expected most, that it was even comfortable and unsuggestive of a sheriff’s sale. At one end a screen served as a partition between two sofas. Near to one of the sofas was a mantel, near to the other a piano. Throughout the room other nooks had been arranged. It was one of the few places where a tête-à-tête can be enjoyed in a crowd.

When the men entered, Miss Raritan was at the piano. On the sofa nearest the mantel Claire had just seated herself. The other women were in a group. Gonfallon at once took up a position by the mantel, on which he leaned, his back turned to his sister-in-law; Manhattan lounged near the piano; and Trement Yarde sat himself next to Claire.

For a moment the room was resonant with that accent which is peculiar to the after-dinner speech. Then, as Miss Raritan’s fingers strayed over the keys, there was a lull. Presently the girl’s voice sounded, low as yet, for she was heating her throat; then suddenly it rose, and dilating filled the room, and, as she sang, each note was evocative of fancies, each word clear as the token on a coin.

Baise-moy, mignonne, cent fois rebaise-moy.

The refrain of her song drifted from her in a murmur of applause. When she had finished, Jones crossed the room to where Gonfallon stood, and, leaning against the mantel, for a moment he gazed at Claire, still seated with Yarde on the sofa just beyond, and plucked at his yellow beard.

With an effort Gonfallon roused himself from a revery into which he had sunk. “She sings well, does she not?” he remarked. “I wish I could induce her to join the choir.” And, as Jones answered nothing, he added, after a moment, “You are the last person I expected to meet tonight.”

“Because of my aunt? What nonsense! Though, to be sure, after the manner in which I was treated one might easily expect me to be in sackcloth. No, Mrs. Manhattan asked me before the Bronx episode occurred, and, having accepted her invitation, I saw no reason to back out. Yesterday I got together a change of linen and a metaphysical theory, and here I am. It is ghastly in the country. If it were not for my man, I give you my word, I believe I would keep myself full as a harvest-moon.”

“Your man?”

Jones had been speaking in the leisurely growl that was usual to him, in a voice in which a drawl and a snarl seemed to struggle for prominence. But now his face lit up, he straightened himself, and, with a glance at the sofa as though to assure himself of the inattention of its occupants, he plucked again at his beard and continued in a clearer key:

“Yes, the one luxury that my aunt’s munificence has permitted me. I have only had the beggar a week, but I have told him that if he behaves himself I will promote him from valet to secretary. His life has been a magic-lantern: he has visited all sorts of impossible places; he has been to Bokhara, to Quito, to Boston⁠—to Mars, for all I know. If I had had a fraction of his adventures I could busy a room-full of stenographers with the dictation of plots. He keeps me in a fever with his anecdotes; he⁠—”

“Is he an Englishman?”

“No; he is a Swiss, or a Pole⁠—both, perhaps. However, I wouldn’t rely on his veracity. He tells me he has only been in this country a few weeks, two of which he passed as servant to some young man here who sent him adrift because he couldn’t marrowbone his boots.”

“H’m.”