Part 31 (1/2)
He took her out to dinner, with elaborate courtesy, and divided his attentions between his partner and his hostess with mathematical precision, beaming now upon Viola, now upon Kate, with such well-calculated intervals that Serviss broke into a broad smile.
”You find yourself well placed, Dr. Weissmann?”
”Well placed and well pleased,” he responded, quickly, ”with no thanks to you, I suspect.”
Kate was much relieved by Weissmann's liking for Viola--it made her party a little less difficult; but she was anxious to have Morton free to talk with Viola, and to that end drew the good doctor into conversation with Clarke, who was not at all pleased with his seat, which was by design at the farthest remove from his psychic. He saw no reason why they might not have been seated side by side.
As Kate remarked to Marion afterwards, it was a hard team to drive, for the table was too small to permit anything like private conversation at either end, and to enter upon general topics was to start Clarke and Weissmann into dialectic clamor. ”I trusted in the food,” she answered to Marion's query. ”It was a good dinner and kept even the preacher silent--part of the time.”
Clarke's face was flushed with wine, and his glance, which rested often on Viola, was not pleasant. He was afraid of her when she shone thus brightly among careless, worldly, sceptical people. She seemed to forget her work, her endowments, and to think only of flattering speeches and caresses. It was all so childish, so foolish in her, so undignified in one who meant so much to the sin-darkened world.
Mrs. Lambert, on the contrary, was humanly glad (for the moment, at least) of her daughter's respite from her grave duties, and sat blandly smiling while the young people talked animatedly on a wide list of subjects.
Morton was delighted to find that Viola had read a good many books, not always the best books, but of such variety that her mind was by no means that of the school-girl. Her experience in life was very slight, but her hunger to know was keen. He was eager to draw her out on her morbid side, but, as he had said to Kate, ”We must not permit anything to rob her of one evening of unbroken normal intercourse. If you can manage Clarke, I will do the rest.”
Kate tried hard to ”manage Clarke,” and was succeeding rather adroitly. Whenever he seemed about to enter upon a discourse she interrupted him, met his ponderous phrases with flippancies, plied him with food (for which he had a singular weakness), and in many other womanly ways discouraged and, in the end, intimidated him. He was at a distinct disadvantage and knew it, and the knowledge irritated him.
However, with all his eccentricities he was a man of considerable social experience, and, while he was not at any time joyous of countenance, he did not in open guise offend, though he sank at last into a glowering silence, leaving the talk to Weissmann.
Morton gave much attention to Mrs. Lambert, securing from her, almost before she realized it, a promise to join a theatre-party, and thereupon turned to Viola to say, ”I hope you will consent.”
”Consent?” she cried, with s.h.i.+ning eyes. ”I should like it above everything. You see I've never really _lived_ in a big city, and it's all so new and splendid to me.”
Morton responded lightly. ”I wish I could see it with your eyes. I suppose New York is a wonderful city, and I'm sure all this chaos is making towards something unparalleled in beauty, but just now I take the point of view of a native who has been driven out of the good old down-town streets by vulgar trade. The Servisses lived for forty years at the corner of Corlear Square, but four years ago a big apartment hotel rose next door, shutting off our light, and we had to move.
Hence our acrimony. The city grows more and more a show-place, wherein the prodigal American may buy the pleasure he thinks commensurate.
Most of us who were born here have quite lost our hold on the earth; for instance, here we are, Kate and I, treed in a ten-story hotel on ground from which we used to gather huckleberries, and therein lies the history of many another New York family.”
Viola looked round the s.p.a.cious and handsome dining-room. ”I think this way of living is beautiful. I want mamma to take an apartment over here on the Park. I love the Park, although it makes me homesick for the West sometimes.”
”If you do decide to take an apartment, consult Kate. What she doesn't know of New York isn't lady-like for any one to know. Frankly, Mrs.
Lambert, I should be very glad to see you get away from Pratt's house.
He is, I fear, a selfish, brutal business-man--an egotist who would sacrifice you both instantly if it would add to his comfort of mind or body. But wait. I am forgetting my duties as host--we are to avoid all unpleasant topics,” and thereupon he led the conversation back to impersonal discussions of books and music.
All through this exquisite little dinner Viola sat with a strengthening determination to a.s.sert her right to leave her gloomy prison-house on the Drive, a house in which there was neither wholesome conversation nor privacy nor order. An ambition to live humanly and harmoniously in an apartment like this grew each moment in definiteness. She appreciated the delicacy of the centre-piece of maidenhair-fern, veiling with its cloud of green a few flame-like jonquils. She took a woman's joy in the immaculate napery and in the charm and variety of the china. Such housekeeping was an art, and quite impossible without the personal touch of the mistress, and, as she looked across towards Kate's homely, pleasant face, her heart went out to her in grat.i.tude and love. She could be trusted, this frank, laughing, graceful woman. She represented a most modern union of housewife and intellectual companion. No wonder Dr. Serviss remained unmarried.
Clarke's forbidding, unrelenting face, looming darkly at Kate's side, was revealed to her in a new and most unpleasant light. She resented his scowling glances, and pitied his failure to glow in such genial company. She saw him for the first time the prosing bigot, narrow and repulsive. She resented his failure to subordinate his theories. Up to this moment she had supposed herself respecting him; now she began to realize that she had lost even that, and the thought made her s.h.i.+ver with foreboding. How different were the men of science, with their jocular, irrelevant, but always illuminating comment on whatever subject they handled! It was all touch and go with them, and yet they were quite as serious as he.
As the coffee came in Kate rose with a word of caution: ”Morton, we'll expect you to join us soon--”
”You may depend upon us,” replied Weissmann.
”And you mustn't talk out all the interesting subjects--save some of them for us to hear.”
”We shall not be able to talk on any other subject than yourselves,”
retorted Weissmann, gallantly, ”and that would not be good for you to hear.”
Kate laughed. ”I know what that means. These Western girls are compelling creatures. Well, I will not complain if she only shakes you out of your scientific complacency.”
They were hardly out of the room before Weissmann asked, ”Is Miss Lambert from the West?”