"Why, John, it's you!"

So that was Hortense, then! That rich and quiet utterance was hers, a schooled and studied management of speech. I found myself surprised, and I knew directly why; that word of one of the old ladles, "I consider that she looks like a steel wasp," had implanted in me some definite antic.i.p.ations to which the voice certainly did not correspond. How fervently I desired that she would lift her thick veil, while John, with hat in hand, was greeting her, and being presented to her companions!

Why she had not spoken to John sooner was of course a recondite question, and beyond my power to determine with merely the given situation to guide me. Hadn't she recognized him before? Had her thick veil, and his position, and the general slight flurry of the misadventure, intercepted recognition until she heard his voice when he addressed Charley. Or had she known her lover at once, and rapidly decided that the moment was an unpropitious one for a first meeting after absence, and that she would pa.s.s on to Kings Port unrevealed, but then had found this plan become impossible through the collision between Charley and John? It was not until certain incidents of the days following brought Miss Rieppe's nature a good deal further home to me, that a third interpretation of her delay in speaking to John dawned upon my mind; that I was also made aware how a woman's understanding of the words "Steel wasp," when applied by her to one of her own s.e.x, may differ widely from a man's understanding of them; and that Miss Rieppe, through her thick veil, saw from her seat in the automobile something which my own unenc.u.mbered vision had by no means detected.

But now, here on the bridge, even her outward appearance was as shrouded as her inward qualities--save such as might be audible in that voice, as her skilful, well-placed speeches to one and the other of the company tided over and carried off into ease this uneasy moment. All men, at such a voice, have p.r.i.c.ked up their ears since the beginning; there was much woman in it; each slow, schooled syllable called its challenge to questing man. But I got no chance to look in the eye that went with that voice; she took all the advantages which her veil gave her; and how well she used them I was to learn later.

In the general smoothing-out process which she was so capably effecting, her attention was about to reach me, when my name was suddenly called out from behind her. It was Beverly Rodgers, that accomplished and inveterate bachelor of fashion. Ten years before, when I had seen much of him, he had been more particular in his company, frequently declaring in his genial, irresponsible way that New York society was going to the devil. But many tempting dances on the land, and cruises on the water, had taken him deep among our lower cla.s.ses that have boiled up from the bottom with their millions--and besides, there would be nothing to marvel at in Beverly's presence in any company that should include Hortense Rieppe, if she carried out the promise of her voice.

Beverly was his customary, charming, effusive self, coming out of the automobile to me with his "By Jove, old man," and his "Who'd have thought it, old fellow?" and sprinkling urbane little drops of jocosity over us collectively, as the garden water-turning apparatus sprinkles a lawn. His knowing me, and the way he brought it out, and even the tumbling into the road of a few wraps and chattels of travel as he descended from the automobile, and the necessity of picking these up and handing them back with delightful little jocular apologies, such as, "By Jove, what a lout I am," all this helped the meeting on prodigiously, and got us gratefully away from the disconcerting incident of the torn money. Charley was helpful, too; you would never have supposed from the polite small-talk which he was now offering to John Mayrant that he had within some three minutes received the equivalent of a slap across the eyes from that youth, and carried the soiled consequences in his pocket.

And such a thing is it to be a true man of the world of finance, that upon the arrival now of a second automobile, also his property, and containing a set of maids and valets, and also some live dogs sitting up, covered with gla.s.s eyes and wrappings like their owners, munificent Charley at once offered the dead dog and his mistress a place in it, and begged she would let it take her wherever she wished to go. Everybody exclaimed copiously and condolingly over the unfortunate occurrence.

What a fine animal he was, to be sure! What breed was he? Of course, he wasn't used to automobiles! Was it quite certain that he was dead? Quel dommage! And Charley would be so happy to replace him.

And how was Eliza La Heu bearing herself amid these murmurously chattered infelicities? She was listening with composure to the murmurs of Hortense Rieppe, more felicitous, no doubt. Miss Rieppe, through her veil, was particularly devoting herself to Miss La Lieu. I could not hear what she said; the little chorus of condolence and suggestion intercepted all save her tone, and that, indeed, coherently sustained its measured cadence through the texture of fragments uttered by Charley and the others. Eliza La Heu had now got herself altogether in hand, and, saving her pale cheeks, no sign betrayed that the young girl's feelings had been so recently too strong for her. To these strangers, ignorant of her usual manner, her present strange quietness may very well have been accepted as her habit.

"Thank you," she replied to munificent Charley's offer that she would use his second automobile. She managed to make her polite words cut like a scythe. "I should crowd it."

"But they shall get out and walk; it will be good for them," said Charley, indicating the valets and maids, and possibly the dogs, too.

Beverly Rodgers did much better than Charley. With a charming gesture and bow, he offered his own seat in the first automobile. "I am going to walk in any case," he a.s.sured her.

"One gentleman among them," I heard John Mayrant mutter behind me.

Miss La Heu declined, the chorus urged, but Beverly (who was indeed a gentleman, every inch of him) shook his head imperceptibly at Charley; and while the little exclamations--"Do come! So much more comfortable!

So nice to see more of you!"--dropped away, Miss La Heu had settled her problem quite simply for herself. A little procession of vehicles, townward bound, had gathered on the bridge, waiting until the closing of the draw should allow them to continue upon their way. From these most of the occupants had descended, and were staring with avidity at us all; the great gla.s.s eyes and the great refulgent cars held them in timidity and fascination, and the poor lifeless white body of General, stretched beside the way, heightened the hypnotic mystery; one or two of the boldest had touched him, and found no outward injury upon him; and this had sent their eyes back to the automobile with increased awe. Eliza La Heu summoned one of the onlookers, an old negro; at some word she said to him he hurried back and returned, leading his horse and empty cart, and General was lifted into this. The girl took her seat beside the old driver.

"No," she said to John Mayrant, "certainly not."

I wondered at the needless severity with which she declined his offer to accompany her and help her.

He stood by the wheel of the cart, looking up at her and protesting, and I joined him.

"Thank you," she returned, "I need no one. You will both oblige me by saying no more about it."

"John!" It was the slow, well-calculated utterance of Hortense Rieppe.

Did I hear in it the caressing note of love?

John turned.

The draw had swung to, the mast and sail of the vessel were separating away from the bridge with a stealthy motion, men with iron bars were at work fastening the draw secure, and horses' hoofs knocked nervously upon the wooden flooring as the internal churning of the automobiles burst upon their innocent ears.

"John, if Mr. Rodgers is really not going with us--"

Thus Hortense; and at that Miss La Heu:--

"Why do you keep them waiting?" There was no caress in that note! It was polished granite.

He looked up at her on her high seat by the extremely dilapidated negro, and then he walked forward and took his place beside his veiled fiancee, among the gla.s.s eyes. A hiss of sharp noise spurted from the automobiles, horses danced, and then, smoothly, the two huge engines were gone with their cargo of large, distorted shapes, leaving behind them--quite as our present epoch will leave behind it--a trail of power, of ingenuity, of ruthlessness, and a bad smell.

"Hold hard, old boy!" chuckled Beverly, to whom I communicated this sentiment. "How do you know the stink of one generation does not become the perfume of the next?" Beverly, when he troubled to put a thing at all (which was seldom--for he kept his quite good brains well-nigh perpetually turned out to gra.s.s--or rather to gra.s.s widows) always put it well, and with a bracing vocabulary. "Hullo!" he now exclaimed, and walked out into the middle of the roadway, where he picked up a parasol.

"Kitty will be in a jolly old stew. None of its expensive bones broken however." And then he hailed me by a name of our youth. "What are you doing down here, you old sourbelly?"

"Watching you sun yourself on the fat cushions of the yellow rich."

"Oh, shucks, old man, they're not so yellow!"

"Charley strikes me as yellower than his own gold."

"Charley's not a bad little sort. Of course, he needs coaching a bit here and there--just now, for instance, when he didn't see that that girl wouldn't think of riding in the machine that had just killed her dog. By Jove, give that girl a year in civilization and she'd do! Who was the young fire-eater?"

"Fire-eater! He's a lot more decent than you or I."

"But that's saying so little, dear boy!"

"Seriously, Beverly."

"Oh, hang it with your 'seriously'! Well, then, seriously, melodrama was the correct ticket and all that in 1840, but we've outgrown it; it's devilish demode to chuck things in people's faces.

"I'm not sorry John Mayrant did it!" I brought out his name with due emphasis.

"All the same," Beverly was beginning, when the automobile returned rapidly upon us, and, guessing the cause of this, he waved the parasol.

Charley descended to get it--an unnecessary act, prompted, I suppose, by the sudden relief of finding that it was not lost.

He made his thanks marked. "It is my sister's," he concluded, to me, by way of explanation, in his slightly foreign accent. "It is not much, but it has got some stones and things in the handle."

We were favored with a bow from the veiled Hortense, shrill thanks from Kitty, and the car, turning, again left us in a moment.

"You've got a Frenchman along," I said.

"Little Gazza," Beverly returned. "Italian; though from his morals you'd never guess he wasn't Parisian. Great people in Rome. Hereditary right to do something in the presence of the Pope--or not to do it, I forget which. Not a bit of a bad little sort, Gazza. He has just sold a lot of old furniture--Renaissance--Lorenzo du Borgia--that sort of jolly old truck--to Bohm, you know."

I didn't know.

"Oh, yes, you do, old boy. Harry Bohm, of Bohm & Cohn. Everybody knows Bohm, and we'll all be knowing Cohn by next year. Gazza has sold him a lot of furniture, too. Bohm's from Pittsfield, or South Lee, or East Canaan, or West Stockbridge, or some of those other back-country cider presses that squirt some of the hardest propositions into Wall Street.

He's just back from buying a railroad, and four or five mines in Mexico.

Bohm represents Christianity in the firm. At Newport they call him the military attache to Jerusalem. He's the big chap that sat behind me in the car. He'll marry Kitty as soon as she can get her divorce. Bohm's a jolly old sort--and I tell you, you old sourbelly, you're letting this Southern moss grow over you a bit. Hey? What? Yellow rich isn't half bad, and I'll say it myself, and pretend it's mine; but hang it, old man, their children won't be worse than lemon-colored, and the grandchildren will be white!"

"Just in time," I exclaimed, "to take a back seat with their evaporated fortunes!"

Beverly chuckled. "Well, if they do evaporate, there will be new ones.

Now don't walk along making Mayflower eyes at me. I'm no Puritan, and my people have had a front seat since pretty early in the game, which I'm holding on to, you know. And by Jove, old man, I tell you, if you wish to hold on nowadays, you can't be drawing lines! If you don't want to see yourself jolly well replaced, you must fall in with the replacers.

Our blooming old republic is merely the quickest process of endless replacing yet discovered, and you take my tip, and back the replacers!

That's where Miss Rieppe, for all her Kings Port traditions, shows sense."

I turned square on him. "Then she has broken it?"

"Broken what?"

"Her engagement to John Mayrant. You mean to say that you didn't--?"