Part 4 (1/2)
”I thought they looked like pin-cus.h.i.+ons on a kitchen-maid's dressing-table,” returned Aunt Victoria more forcibly than she usually expressed herself. ”You look vastly better with the straight lines of your plain white dresses. You have a great deal of style, Sylvia.
Judith is handsomer than you, but she will never have any style.” This verdict, upon both the Huberts and herself, delivered with a serious accent of mature deliberation, impressed Sylvia. It was one of the speeches she was to ponder.
Although Professor Marshall showed himself noticeably negligent in the matter of introducing his colleagues to his sister, it was only two or three days before Aunt Victoria's half-hours of waiting before the Main Building had other companions.h.i.+p than Sylvia's. This was due to the decisive action of young Professor Saunders, just back from the British Museum, where, at Professor Marshall's suggestion, he had been digging up facts about the economic history of the twelfth century in England. Without waiting for an invitation he walked straight up to the carriage with the ostensible purpose of greeting Sylvia, who was a great favorite of his, and who in her turn had a romantic admiration for the tall young a.s.sistant. Of all the faculty people who frequented the Marshall house, he and old Professor Kennedy were the only people whom Sylvia considered ”stylish,” and Professor Kennedy, in spite of his very high connection with the aristocracy of La Chance, was so cross and depressed that really his ”style” did not count. She was now greatly pleased by the younger professor's public and cordial recognition of her, and, with her precocious instinct for social ease, managed to introduce him to her aunt, even adding quaintly a phrase which she had heard her mother use in speaking of him, ”My father thinks Professor Saunders has a brilliant future before him.”
This very complimentary reference had not the effect she hoped for, since both the young man and Aunt Victoria laughed, exchanging glances of understanding, and said to each other, ”Isn't she delicious?” But at least it effectually broke any ice of constraint, so that the new-comer felt at once upon the most familiarly friendly terms with the sister of his chief. Thereafter he came frequently to lean an arm on the side of the carriage and talk with the ”ladies-in-waiting,”
as he called the pretty woman and child. Once or twice Sylvia was transferred to the front seat beside Peter, the negro driver, on the ground that she could watch the horses better, and they took Professor Saunders for a drive through the flat, fertile country, now beginning to gleam ruddy with autumnal tints of bronze and scarlet and gold.
Although she greatly enjoyed the social brilliance of these occasions, on which Aunt Victoria showed herself unexpectedly sprightly and altogether enchanting, Sylvia felt a little guilty that they did not return to pick up Professor Marshall, and she was relieved, when they met at supper, that he made no reference to their defection.
He did not, in fact, mention his a.s.sistant's name at all, and yet he did not seem surprised when Professor Saunders, coming to the Sunday evening rehearsal of the quartet, needed no introduction to his sister, but drew a chair up with the evident intention of devoting all his conversation to her. For a time this overt intention was frustrated by old Reinhardt, smitten with an admiration as unconcealed for the beautiful stranger. In the interval before the arrival of the later members of the quartet, he fluttered around her like an ungainly old moth, racking his scant English for complimentary speeches. These were received by Aunt Victoria with her best calm smile, and by Professor Saunders with open impatience. His equanimity was not restored by the fact that there chanced to be rather more general talk than usual that evening, leaving him but small opportunity for his tete-a-tete.
It began by the arrival of Professor Kennedy, a little late, delayed at a reunion of the Kennedy family. He was always reduced to bilious gloom by any close contact with that distinguished, wealthy, and much looked-up-to group of citizens of La Chance, and this evening he walked into the front door obviously even more depressed than usual.
The weather had turned cool, and his imposingly tall old person was wrapped in a cape-overcoat. Sylvia had no fondness for Professor Kennedy, but she greatly admired his looks and his clothes, and his handsome, high-nosed old face. She watched him wrestle himself out of his coat as though it were a grappling enemy, and was not surprised at the irritability which sat visibly upon his arching white eyebrows.
He entered the room trailing his 'cello-bag beside him and plucking peevishly at its drawstrings, and although Aunt Victoria quite roused herself at the sight of him, he received his introduction to her with reprehensible indifference. He sank into a chair and looked sadly at the fire, taking the point of his white beard in his long, tapering fingers. Professor Marshall turned from the piano, where he sat, striking A for the conscientious Bauermeister to tune, and said laughingly, ”Hey there, Knight of the Dolorous Countenance, what vulture is doing business at the old stand on your liver?”
Professor Kennedy crossed one long, elegantly slim leg over the other, ”I've been dining with the Kennedy family,” he said, with a neat and significant conciseness.
”Anything specially the matter with the predatory rich?” queried Marshall, reaching for his viola-case.
Professor Kennedy shook his head. ”Alas! there's never anything the matter with them. _Comme le diable, ils se portent toujours bien_.”
At the purity of accent with which this embittered remark was made, Mrs. Marshall-Smith opened her eyes, and paid more attention as the old professor went on.
”The last of my unmarried nieces has shown herself a true Kennedy by providing herself with a dolichocephalic blond of a husband, like all the others. The dinner was given in honor of the engagement.”
Sylvia was accustomed to finding Professor Kennedy's remarks quite unintelligible, and this one seemed no odder to her than the rest, so that she was astonished that Aunt Victoria was not ashamed to confess as blank an ignorance as the little girl's. The beautiful woman leaned toward the morose old man with the suave self-confidence of one who has never failed to charm, and drew his attention to her by a laugh of amused perplexity. ”May I ask,” she inquired, ”_what_ kind of a husband is that? It is a new variety to me.”
Professor Kennedy looked at her appraisingly. ”It's the kind most women aspire to,” he answered enigmatically. He imparted to this obscure remark the air of pa.s.sing a sentence of condemnation.
Sylvia's mother stirred uneasily in her chair and looked at her husband. He had begun to take his viola from the case, but now returned it and stood looking quizzically from his sister to his guest. ”Professor Kennedy talks a special language, Vic,” he said lightly. ”Some day he'll make a book of it and be famous. He divides us all into two kinds: the ones that get what they want by taking it away from other people--those are the dolichocephalic blonds--though I believe it doesn't refer to the color of their hair. The other kind are the white folks, the unpredatory ones who have scruples, and get pushed to the wall for their pains.”
Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned to the young man beside her. ”It makes one wonder, doesn't it,” she conjectured pleasantly, ”to which type one belongs oneself?”
In this welcome s.h.i.+fting from the abstract to the understandably personal, old Reinhardt saw his opportunity. ”Ach, womens, beautifool and goot womens!” he cried in his thick, kindly voice. ”Dey are abofe being types. To every good man, dey can be only wie eine blume, so hold and schon--”
Professor Kennedy's acid voice broke in--”So you're still in the 1830 Romantische Schule period, are you, Reinhardt?” He went on to Mrs.
Marshall-Smith: ”But there _is_ something in that sort of talk. Women, especially those who consider themselves beautiful and good, escape being _either_ kind of type, by the legerdemain with which they get what they want, and yet don't soil their fingers with predatory acts.”
Mrs. Marshall-Smith was, perhaps, a shade tardy in asking the question which he had evidently cast his speech to extract from her, but after an instant's pause she brought it out bravely. ”How in the world do you mean?” she asked, smiling, and received, with a quick flicker of her eyelids, the old man's response of, ”They buy a dolichocephalic blond to do their dirty work for them and pay for him with their persons.”
”_Oh!_” cried Mrs. Marshall, checking herself in a sudden deprecatory gesture of apology towards her sister-in-law. She looked at her husband and gave him a silent, urgent message to break the awkward pause, a message which he disregarded, continuing coolly to inspect his fingernails with an abstracted air, contradicted by the half-smile on his lips. Sylvia, listening to the talk, could make nothing out of it, but miserably felt her little heart grow leaden as she looked from one face to another. Judith and Lawrence, tired of waiting for the music to begin, had dropped asleep among the pillows of the divan. Mr.
Bauermeister yawned, looked at the clock, and plucked at the strings of his violin. He hated all talk as a waste of time. Old Reinhardt's simple face looked as puzzled and uneasy as Sylvia's own. Young Mr.
Saunders seemed to have no idea that there was anything particularly unsettling in the situation, but, disliking the caustic vehemence of his old colleague's speech, inter-posed to turn it from the lady by his side. ”And you're the man who's opposed on principle to sweeping generalizations!” he said in cheerful rebuke.
”Ah, I've just come from a gathering of the Clan Kennedy,” repeated the older man. ”I defy anybody to produce a more successfully predatory family than mine. The fortunes of the present generation of Kennedys don't come from any white-livered subterfuge, like the rise in the value of real estate, as my own ill-owned money does. No, sir; the good, old, well-recognized, red-blooded method of going out and taking it away from people not so smart as they are, is good enough for them, if you please. And my woman relatives--” He swept them away with a gesture. ”When I--”
Mrs. Marshall cut him short resolutely. ”Are you going to have any music tonight, or aren't you?” she said.