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Read Ebook: Mrs. Pendleton's Four-in-hand by Atherton Gertrude Franklin Horn
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Ebook has 381 lines and 15966 words, and 8 pages
"Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over."
Boswell, with quivering nostrils, plunged a pen into the ink-well, and in that quiet room two hearts thumped so loudly that only passion and scratching pens averted mutual and withering contempt.
As Boswell left the office a very young man entered it. He possessed that nondescript blond complexion which seems to be the uniform of the New York youth of fashion. The ciphers of the Four Hundred have achieved the well-scrubbed appearance of the Anglo-Saxon more successfully than his accent. Mr. Dedham might have been put through a clothes-wringer. Even his minute and recent moustache looked as if each hair had its particular nurse, and his pink and chubby face defied conscientious dissipation. He sauntered up to the clerk's desk with an elaborate affectation of indifference, and drawled a demand for his mail.
The clerk handed him a dainty note sealed with a crest. He accepted it with an absent air, although a look of genuine boyish delight thrust its way through the fishy inertness of his average expression.
It took him a minute and a half to get into the morning-room and read these fateful lines:--
"Mon ami,-- I have but this moment received your letter, which seems to have been delayed. I say nothing here of the happiness which its contents have given me. Come at once.
"Jessica Pendleton.
"Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over."
A tall broad-shouldered young man, with much repose of face and manner, entered the office from the avenue, glanced at the pigeon-holes above the clerk's desk, then sauntered deliberately into the morning-room and looked out of the window. A slight rigidity of the nostrils alone betokened the impatience within, and his uneasy thoughts ran somewhat as follows:--
"What a fool I have been! After all my experience with women to make such an ass of myself over the veriest coquette that ever breathed; but her preference for me last winter was so pointed--oh, damnation!"
He stood gnawing his underlip at the lumbering 'bus, but turned suddenly as a man approached from behind and presented several letters on a tray. The first and only one he opened ran thus:--
"Mon ami!--I have but this moment received your letter, which seems to have been delayed. I say nothing here of the happiness which its contents have given me. Come at once.
"Jessica Pendleton.
"Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over."
Severance folded the note, his face paling a little.
"Well, well, she is true after all. What a brute I was to misjudge her!" He strolled back to the office. "I will go home and write to her, and to-morrow I shall see her! Great Heaven! Were six months ever so long before?"
As he turned from the coat-room Boswell entered the office by the opposite door.
"The fellow looks as gay as a lark," he thought. "He hasn't looked like that for six months. I believe I'll make it up with him--particularly as I've come out ahead!"
"Give me that package," demanded Boswell dreamily of the clerk. Then he caught sight of Severance. "Why, Jack, old fellow!" he cried, "how are you? Haven't seen you looking so well for an age. Don't go out. It's too hot."
"Oh, hang it! I've got to. I'm off for Newport to-morrow. It's so infernally dull in town."
"No? Didn't know you had an aunt. I congratulate you. Hope she'll go off, I'm sure."
"Hope so. Here comes Teddy,--looks like an elongated rubber ball. It's some time since I've seen him so buoyant. How are you, Teddy?"
"How are you, Norton, old boy?" explained Dedham, rapturously. "How glad I am to hear the old name once more! You've given me the cold shoulder of late."
"Oh, well, my boy, you know men will be fools occasionally. But give by-gones the go-by. I'm going to Newport to-morrow. Can I take any messages to your numerous--"
"Dear boy! I'm going to Newport to-morrow. Sea-bathing ordered by my physician."
"Jove! I am in luck! Severance is going over, too. We'll have a jolly time of it."
"I should say so!" murmured Teddy. "Heaven! Hello, Sev, how are you? Didn't see you. As long as we are all going the same way we might as well bury our hatchet. What do you say, dear boy?"
"Only too happy," said Severance, heartily. "And may we never unearth it again. Here comes Trent. He looks as if he had just been returned for the Senate."
"How are you?" demanded Trent, peremptorily. "You have made it up? Don't leave me out in the cold."
Dedham made a final lunge for his deserting dignity, then sent it on its way. "I should think not," he cried, with dancing eyes. "Give me your fist."
In a moment they were all shaking each other's hand off, and good-fellowship was streaming from every eye.
"Come over to my rooms, all of you," gurgled Teddy, "and have a drink."
"With pleasure, my boy," said Trent. "But native rudeness will compel me to drink and run. I am off for Newport--"
"Newport!" cried three voices.
"Yes; anything strange in that? I'm going on vital business connected with the coming election."
"This is a coincidence!" exclaimed Boswell, with the appreciation of the romanticist. "Why, we are all going to Newport. Dedham in search of health, Severance of pleasure, and I of a fortune--only the old mummy is always making out her cheques, but never passes them in. Well, I hope we'll see a lot of each other when we get there."
"Oh, of course," said Severance, hastily. "We will have many another game of polo together."
"Well," said Dedham, "come over to my rooms now and drink to the success of our separate quests."
Miss Decker paced restlessly up and down the sea-room waiting for the mail. Mrs. Pendleton, more composed but equally nervous, lay in a long chair, with expectation in her eyes and triumph on her lips.
"Will they answer or will they not?" exclaimed Miss Decker. "If the mail would only come! Will they be crushed?--furious?--or--will they apologise?"
"I care nothing what they do," said Mrs. Pendleton, languidly. "All I wanted was to see them when they received my notes, and later when they met to compare them. I hold that my revenge is a masterpiece--to turn the joke on them and to let them see that they could not make a fool of me at the same time! Oh! how dared they?"
"Well, they'll never perpetrate another practical joke, my dear. You have your revenge, Jessica; you have blunted their sense of humour for life. I doubt if they ever even read the funny page of a newspaper again. Here comes the postman. There! the bell has rung. Why doesn't Hart go? I'll go myself in a minute."
Mrs. Pendleton's nostrils dilated a little, but she did not turn her head even when the manservant entered and held a silver tray before her.
Four letters lay thereon. She placed them on her lap but did not speak until the man had left the room. Then she looked at Miss Decker and gave the letters a little sweep with the tips of her fingers.
"They have answered," she said.
"Oh, Jessica, for Heaven's sake don't be so iron-bound!" cried her friend. "Read them."
"You can read them if you choose. I have no interest beyond knowing that they received mine."
Miss Decker needed no second invitation. She caught the letters from Mrs. Pendleton's lap and tore one of them open. She read a few lines, then dropped limply on a chair.
"Jessica!" she whispered, with a little agonised gasp, "listen to this."
Mrs. Pendleton turned her eyes inquiringly, but would not stoop to curiosity. "Well," she said, "I am listening."
"It is from Mr. Trent. And--listen:--
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