Mrs. Forrester, untied the ponies, and sprang in beside her.
Without direction the team started down the frozen main street,
where few people were abroad, crossed the creek on the ice, and
trotted up the poplar-bordered lane toward the house on the hill.
The late afternoon sun burned on the snow-crusted pastures. The
poplars looked very tall and straight, pinched up and severe in
their winter poverty. Mrs. Forrester chatted to Niel with her face
turned toward him, holding her muff up to break the wind.
"I'm counting on you to help me entertain Constance Ogden. Can you
take her off my hands day after tomorrow, come over in the
afternoon? Your duties as a lawyer aren't very arduous yet?" She
smiled teasingly. "What can I do with a miss of nineteen? One who
goes to college? I've no learned conversation for her!"
"Surely I haven't!" Niel exclaimed.
"Oh, but you're a boy! Perhaps you can interest her in lighter
things. She's considered pretty."
"Do you think she is?"
"I haven't seen her lately. She was striking,--china blue eyes and
heaps of yellow hair, not exactly yellow,--what they call an ashen
blond, I believe."
Niel had noticed that in describing the charms of other women Mrs.
Forrester always made fun of them a little.
They drew up in front of the house. Ben Keezer came round from the
kitchen to take the team.
"You are to go back for Mr. Forrester at six, Ben. Niel, come in
for a moment and get warm." She drew him through the little storm
entry, which protected the front door in winter, into the hall.
"Hang up your coat and come along." He followed her through the
parlour into the sitting-room, where a little coal grate was
burning under the black mantelpiece, and sat down in the big
leather chair in which Captain Forrester dozed after his mid-day
meal. It was a rather dark room, with walnut bookcases that had
carved tops and glass doors. The floor was covered by a red
carpet, and the walls were hung with large, old-fashioned
engravings; "The House of the Poet on the Last Day of Pompeii,"
"Shakespeare Reading before Queen Elizabeth."
Mrs. Forrester left him and presently returned carrying a tray with
a decanter and sherry glasses. She put it down on her husband's
smoking-table, poured out a glass for Niel and one for herself, and
perched on the arm of one of the stuffed chairs, where she sat
sipping her sherry and stretching her tiny, silver-buckled slippers
out toward the glowing coals.
"It's so nice to have you staying on until after Christmas," Niel
observed. "You've only been here one other Christmas since I can
remember."
"I'm afraid we're staying on all winter this year. Mr. Forrester
thinks we can't afford to go away. For some reason, we are
extraordinarily poor just now."
"Like everybody else," the boy commented grimly.
"Yes, like everybody else. However, it does no good to be glum
about it, does it?" She refilled the two glasses. "I always take
a little sherry at this time in the afternoon. At Colorado Springs
some of my friends take tea, like the English. But I should feel
like an old woman, drinking tea! Besides, sherry is good for my
throat." Niel remembered some legend about a weak chest and
occasional terrifying hemorrhages. But that seemed doubtful, as
one looked at her,--fragile, indeed, but with such light,
effervescing vitality. "Perhaps I do seem old to you, Niel, quite
old enough for tea and a cap!"
He smiled gravely. "You seem always the same to me, Mrs. Forrester."
"Yes? And how is that?"
"Lovely. Just lovely."
As she bent forward to put down her glass she patted his cheek.
"Oh, you'll do very well for Constance!" Then, seriously, "I'm
glad if I do, though. I want you to like me well enough to come to
see us often this winter. You shall come with your uncle to make a
fourth at whist. Mr. Forrester must have his whist in the evening.
Do you think he is looking any worse, Niel? It frightens me to see
him getting a little uncertain. But there, we must believe in good
luck!" She took up the half-empty glass and held it against the
light.
Niel liked to see the firelight sparkle on her earrings, long
pendants of garnets and seed-pearls in the shape of fleurs-de-lys.
She was the only woman he knew who wore earrings; they hung
naturally against her thin, triangular cheeks. Captain Forrester,
although he had given her handsomer ones, liked to see her wear
these, because they had been his mother's. It gratified him to
have his wife wear jewels; it meant something to him. She never
left off her beautiful rings unless she was in the kitchen.
"A winter in the country may do him good," said Mrs. Forrester,
after a silence during which she looked intently into the fire, as
if she were trying to read the outcome of their difficulties there.
"He loves this place so much. But you and Judge Pommeroy must keep
an eye on him when he is in town, Niel. If he looks tired or
uncertain, make some excuse and bring him home. He can't carry a
drink or two as he used,"--she glanced over her shoulder to see
that the door into the dining-room was shut. "Once last winter he
had been drinking with some old friends at the Antlers,--nothing
unusual, just as he always did, as a man must be able to do,--but
it was too much for him. When he came out to join me in the
carriage, coming down that long walk, you know, he fell. There was
no ice, he didn't slip. It was simply because he was unsteady. He
had trouble getting up. I still shiver to think of it. To me, it
was as if one of the mountains had fallen down."
A little later Niel went plunging down the hill, looking exultantly
into the streak of red sunset. Oh, the winter would not be so bad,
this year! How strange that she should be here at all, a woman
like her among common people! Not even in Denver had he ever seen
another woman so elegant. He had sat in the dining-room of the
Brown Palace hotel and watched them as they came down to dinner,--
fashionable women from "the East," on their way to California. But
he had never found one so attractive and distinguished as Mrs.
Forrester. Compared with her, other women were heavy and dull;
even the pretty ones seemed lifeless,--they had not that something
in their glance that made one's blood tingle. And never elsewhere
had he heard anything like her inviting, musical laugh, that was
like the distant measures of dance music, heard through opening and
shutting doors.
He could remember the very first time he ever saw Mrs. Forrester,
when he was a little boy. He had been loitering in front of the
Episcopal church one Sunday morning, when a low carriage drove up
to the door. Ben Keezer was on the front seat, and on the back
seat was a lady, alone, in a black silk dress all puffs and
ruffles, and a black hat, carrying a parasol with a carved ivory
handle. As the carri
age stopped she lifted her dress to alight;
out of a swirl of foamy white petticoats she thrust a black, shiny
slipper. She stepped lightly to the ground and with a nod to the
driver went into the church. The little boy followed her through
the open door, saw her enter a pew and kneel. He was proud now
that at the first moment he had recognized her as belonging to a
different world from any he had ever known.
Niel paused for a moment at the end of the lane to look up at the
last skeleton poplar in the long row; just above its pointed tip
hung the hollow, silver winter moon.
FOUR
In pleasant weather Judge Pommeroy walked to the Forresters', but
on the occasion of the dinner for the Ogdens he engaged the
liveryman to take him and his nephew over in one of the town
hacks,--vehicles seldom used except for funerals and weddings.
They smelled strongly of the stable and contained lap-robes as
heavy as lead and as slippery as oiled paper. Niel and his uncle
were the only townspeople asked to the Forresters' that evening;
they rolled over the creek and up the hill in state, and emerged
covered with horsehair.
Captain Forrester met them at the door, his burly figure buttoned
up in a frock coat, a flat collar and black string tie under the
heavy folds of his neck. He was always clean-shaven except for a
drooping dun-coloured moustache. The company stood behind him
laughing while Niel caught up the whisk-broom and began dusting
roan hairs off his uncle's broadcloth. Mrs. Forrester gave Niel a
brushing in turn and then took him into the parlour and introduced
him to Mrs. Ogden and her daughter.
The daughter was a rather pretty girl, Niel thought, in a pale pink
evening dress which left bare her smooth arms and short, dimpled
neck. Her eyes were, as Mrs. Forrester had said, a china blue,
rather prominent and inexpressive. Her fleece of ashy-gold hair
was bound about her head with silver bands. In spite of her fresh,
rose-like complexion, her face was not altogether agreeable. Two
dissatisfied lines reached from the corners of her short nose to
the corners of her mouth. When she was displeased, even a little,
these lines tightened, drew her nose back, and gave her a
suspicious, injured expression. Niel sat down by her and did his
best, but he found her hard to talk to. She seemed nervous and
distracted, kept glancing over her shoulder, and crushing her
handkerchief up in her hands. Her mind, clearly, was elsewhere.
After a few moments he turned to the mother, who was more easily
interested.
Mrs. Ogden was almost unpardonably homely. She had a pear-shaped
face, and across her high forehead lay a row of flat, dry curls.
Her bluish brown skin was almost the colour of her violet dinner
dress. A diamond necklace glittered about her wrinkled throat.
Unlike Constance, she seemed thoroughly amiable, but as she talked
she tilted her head and "used" her eyes, availing herself of those
arch glances which he had supposed only pretty women indulged in.
Probably she had long been surrounded by people to whom she was an
important personage, and had acquired the manner of a spoiled
darling. Niel thought her rather foolish at first, but in a few
moments he had got used to her mannerisms and began to like her.
He found himself laughing heartily and forgot the discouragement of
his failure with the daughter.
Mr. Ogden, a short, weather-beaten man of fifty, with a cast in one
eye, a stiff imperial, and twisted moustaches, was noticeably
quieter and less expansive than when Niel had met him here on
former occasions. He seemed to expect his wife to do the talking.
When Mrs. Forrester addressed him, or passed near him, his good eye
twinkled and followed her,--while the eye that looked askance
remained unchanged and committed itself to nothing.
Suddenly everyone became more lively; the air warmed, and the
lamplight seemed to brighten, as a fourth member of the Denver
party came in from the dining-room with a glittering tray full of
cocktails he had been making. Frank Ellinger was a bachelor of
forty, six feet two, with long straight legs, fine shoulders, and a
figure that still permitted his white waistcoat to button without a
wrinkle under his conspicuously well-cut dinner coat. His black
hair, coarse and curly as the filling of a mattress, was grey about
the ears, his florid face showed little purple veins about his
beaked nose,--a nose like the prow of a ship, with long nostrils.
His chin was deeply cleft, his thick curly lips seemed very
muscular, very much under his control, and, with his strong white
teeth, irregular and curved, gave him the look of a man who could
bite an iron rod in two with a snap of his jaws. His whole figure
seemed very much alive under his clothes, with a restless, muscular
energy that had something of the cruelty of wild animals in it.
Niel was very much interested in this man, the hero of many
ambiguous stories. He didn't know whether he liked him or not.
He knew nothing bad about him, but he felt something evil.
The cocktails were the signal for general conversation, the company
drew together in one group. Even Miss Constance seemed less
dissatisfied. Ellinger drank his cocktail standing beside her
chair, and offered her the cherry in his glass. They were old-
fashioned whiskey cocktails. Nobody drank Martinis then; gin was
supposed to be the consolation of sailors and inebriate scrub-
women.
"Very good, Frank, very good," Captain Forrester pronounced,
drawing out a fresh, cologne-scented handkerchief to wipe his
moustache. "Are encores in order?" The Captain puffed slightly
when he talked. His eyes, always somewhat suffused and bloodshot
since his injury, blinked at his friends from under his heavy lids.
"One more round for everybody, Captain." Ellinger brought in from
the sideboard a capacious shaker and refilled all the glasses
except Miss Ogden's. At her he shook his finger, and offered her
the little dish of Maraschino cherries.
"No, I don't want those. I want the one in your glass," she said
with a pouty smile. "I like it to taste of something!"
"Constance!" said her mother reprovingly, rolling her eyes at Mrs.
Forrester, as if to share with her the charm of such innocence.
"Niel," Mrs. Forrester laughed, "won't you give the child your
cherry, too?"
Niel promptly crossed the room and proffered the cherry in the
bottom of his glass. She took it with her thumb and fore-finger
and dropped it into her own,--where, he was quick to observe, she
left it when they went out to dinner. A stubborn piece of pink
flesh, he decided, and certainly a fool about a man quite old
enough to be her father. He sighed when he saw that he was placed
next her at the dinner table.
Captain Forrester still made a commanding figure at the head of his
own table, with his napkin tucked under his chin and the work of
ca
rving well in hand. Nobody could lay bare the bones of a brace
of duck or a twenty-pound turkey more deftly. "What part of the
turkey do you prefer, Mrs. Ogden?" If one had a preference, it was
gratified, with all the stuffing and gravy that went with it, and
the vegetables properly placed. When a plate left Captain
Forrester's hands, it was a dinner; the recipient was served, and
well served. He served Mrs. Forrester last of the ladies but
before the men, and to her, too, he said, "Mrs. Forrester, what
part of the turkey shall I give you this evening?" He was a man
who did not vary his formulae or his manners. He was no more
mobile than his countenance. Niel and Judge Pommeroy had often
remarked how much Captain Forrester looked like the pictures of
Grover Cleveland. His clumsy dignity covered a deep nature, and a
conscience that had never been juggled with. His repose was like
that of a mountain. When he laid his fleshy thick-fingered hand
upon a frantic horse, an hysterical woman, an Irish workman out for
blood, he brought them peace; something they could not resist.
That had been the secret of his management of men. His sanity
asked nothing, claimed nothing; it was so simple that it brought a
hush over distracted creatures. In the old days, when he was
building road in the Black Hills, trouble sometimes broke out in
camp when he was absent, staying with Mrs. Forrester at Colorado
Springs. He would put down the telegram that announced an
insurrection and say to his wife, "Maidy, I must go to the men."
And that was all he did,--he went to them.
While the Captain was intent upon his duties as host he talked very
little, and Judge Pommeroy and Ellinger kept a lively cross-fire of
amusing stories going. Niel, sitting opposite Ellinger, watched
him closely. He still couldn't decide whether he liked him or not.
In Denver Frank was known as a prince of good fellows; tactful,
generous, resourceful, though apt to trim his sails to the wind; a
man who good-humouredly bowed to the inevitable, or to the almost-
inevitable. He had, when he was younger, been notoriously "wild,"
but that was not held against him, even by mothers with marriageable
daughters, like Mrs. Ogden. Morals were different in those days.
Niel had heard his uncle refer to Ellinger's youthful infatuation
with a woman called Nell Emerald, a handsome and rather unusual
woman who conducted a house properly licensed by the Denver police.
Nell Emerald had told an old club man that though she had been out
behind young Ellinger's new trotting horse, she "had no respect for
a man who would go driving with a prostitute in broad daylight."
This story and a dozen like it were often related of Ellinger, and
the women laughed over them as heartily as the men. All the while
that he was making a scandalous chronicle for himself, young
Ellinger had been devotedly caring for an invalid mother, and he was
described to strangers as a terribly fast young man and a model son.
That combination pleased the taste of the time. Nobody thought the
worse of him. Now that his mother was dead, he lived at the Brown
Palace hotel, though he still kept her house at Colorado Springs.
When the roast was well under way, Black Tom, very formal in a
white waistcoat and high collar, poured the champagne. Captain
Forrester lifted his glass, the frail stem between his thick
fingers, and glancing round the table at his guests and at Mrs.
Forrester, said,
"Happy days!"
It was the toast he always drank at dinner, the invocation he was
sure to utter when he took a glass of whiskey with an old friend.
Whoever had heard him say it once, liked to hear him say it again.
Nobody else could utter those two words as he did, with such
gravity and high courtesy. It seemed a solemn moment, seemed to
knock at the door of Fate; behind which all days, happy and
otherwise, were hidden. Niel drank his wine with a pleasant
shiver, thinking that nothing else made life seem so precarious,