alone in the body of a touring-car, helena tankerville, a slender and fair woman in white, as cool and fresh to look upon as the day was hot and weary to endure, consulted her bracelet-watch, shrugged recklessly, and lifted her parasol an inch or so to enable her to level an imperious stare at the point where the straight, shining lines of railroad track debouched from the western woodland; as if expecting the very strength of her impatience to conjure into sight the overdue train.
she was very pretty and prettily dressed and sure of herself; there were evidences of temper and determination mixed with disquietude in her manner; and there was no one in her present neighbourhood (except possibly her chauffeur) of whose existence she considered it worth her while to be aware. none the less, she was conscious that she was visible. . . .
a faint puff of vapour bellied above the distant screen of pines. immediately a far, mellow, prolonged hoot turned all faces toward the west. a rakish, low-lying locomotive with a long tail of coaches emerged from the woodland and, breathing forth vast volumes of smoke, fled a pursuing cloud of dust, straight as an arrow to the station; where, panting with triumph and relief, as one having won a race, it drew in beside the platform.
incontinently, upwards of two hundred people, the majority of them men in apparently comfortable circumstances, well dressed to the standards of summer negligence, swarmed out of the cars and ran hither and yon, heedlessly elbowing one another and gabbling vociferously as they sought accommodation in the long rank of station-wagons, 'buses, surreys, smartly appointed traps, and motor-cars.
helena, bending forward, overlooked them all with imperceptible disdain. the face she sought was not among those that swam in review beneath her. and presently encountering an overbold glance, she drew back with a little frown of annoyance. already the throng was thinning; conveyances laden to the guards were drawing out of the rank and rattling and rumbling off through stifling drifts of dust; no more passengers were issuing from the coaches; and already the parlour-car porters were picking up their stools and preparing to swing back aboard the train. the conductor waved his final signal. the bell tolled its warning. the locomotive belched black smoke and cinders and amid stentorian puffings began to move, the coaches following to their tune of clanking couplings. no sign of her refractory nephew. and still helena hesitated to give the order to drive home; john had telephoned; it wasn't like him to be delinquent in his promises.
the end of the last car was passing her when she saw him. he appeared suddenly on the rearmost platform, with the startled expression and air of a jack-in-the-box; dropped his suit-case over the rear rail; ran down the steps; delayed an instant to gauge distance and speed: and with nice calculation dropped lightly to the ground.
pausing only to recover his luggage, he approached the motor-car with a sheepish smile for his handsome young aunt, who regarded him with an air of mingled bewilderment and despair.
"wel-l!" she exclaimed, as soon as he was near enough to hear—"of all things—!"
"right you are!" he affirmed gravely, tossing his handbag into the car and following it. "kick along, davy," he added, with a nod to the chauffeur; and gracefully sank back upon the seat beside helena.
purring, the car began to grope its way through the dust-fog. matthias turned twinkling eyes to his aunt. she compressed her lips and shook her head helplessly.
"words inadequate, aunty?"
"quite!" she said. "what were you doing on that train, to come so near forgetting the station?"
"thinking," he explained: "wrapped in profound and exhaustive meditation. i say, how stunning you look!"
she gave him up; or one inferred as much from her gesture.
"you're impossible," she said in a tragic voice. "thinking!... while i had to wait there and be ogled by all those odious men!"
"you must've been ready to sink through the ground."
she eyed him stonily. "you didn't care—!"
"even if i hadn't been preoccupied, it would never have entered my head that you seriously objected to being admired."
she received this in injured silence. matthias chuckled to himself and settled more comfortably into his seat. the motor-car turned off the main road from the station to the village of port madison, down which the greater number of its predecessors had clattered, and found unclouded air on a well-metalled lane bordered with aged oaks and maples. through a funnel-like dip between hills, matthias, looking past his aunt, caught a fleeting glimpse of the cluttered roofs of port madison, its shallow, land-locked harbour set with a little fleet of pleasure boats, and the ineffable, burning blue of the distant sound....
"i presume," helena returned to the charge, disarmingly aggrieved, "you think i ought to be grateful for your condescending to return at all!"
"forgive me," he pleaded, not altogether insincerely; "i know it wasn't right of me to run away like that, but i couldn't help it."
"you couldn't help it!" she murmured despairingly.
"that's just the way of it. i got to thinking about a play i wanted to write, yesterday afternoon, and—well, along about ten o'clock it got too strong for me. i just had to get back to my typewriter. you know how that is."
"i? what do i know about your silly playwriting?"
laughing, he bent nearer and patted the gloved hand on the cushions beside him. "you know perfectly well, helena dear, what it is to want to do something so bad you simply can't help yourself. it's the matthias blood in both of us. that's why you ran off and married tankerville against everybody's advice. of course, it did turn out beautifully; but you didn't stop to wonder whether it would or not when you took it into your head to marry him. the same with me: you decide that it's high time for your delightful sister-in-law to get married, and you look round and fix on your dutiful nephew for the bridegroom-elect—wholly because you want it to be that way."
"don't you?" she demanded sharply.
he took a moment to think this over. "i suppose i do," he admitted almost reluctantly. "but—"
"you're in love with her!" helena declared with spirit.
"quite true, but—"
"then why," she begged in tones of moderate exasperation—"why do you object—hang fire—run away like a silly, frightened schoolboy as soon as i get everything arranged for you?"
"but, you see, i'm not in a position to get married yet," he argued. "i haven't—"
"how's that—'not in a position'?" she interrupted testily.
"you keep forgetting i'm the family pauper, the poor relation, whereas venetia has all the money there is, more or less."
"there you are!" helena turned her palms out expressively; folded them in resignation. "what more can you ask?"
"something more nearly approaching an equal footing, at least."
"jack!"—she turned to him with a fine air of innocence—"how much money have you got, anyway?"
"thirty-six hundred per annum, as you know very well," he replied. "but, my dear, dear aunty (you're one of the most beautiful creatures alive and i'm awfully proud and fond of you) surely you must understand that no decent fellow wants to go to the girl he's in love with and make a proposition like this: 'i've got thirty-six hundred and you've got three hundred and sixty thousand; let's marry and divide.'"
"how long have you been writing plays?"
"oh ... several years."
"and how many have you written?"
"quite a few."
"and how much have you made at it?"
"next to nothing, but—"
"then why do you persist?"
"because it's the thing i want to do."
"but you can't make any money at it—"
"i may make a lot before long. meanwhile, i like it."
"but if you'd only listen to reason and let tankerville—"
"with all the best intentions in the world, dear helena, tankerville couldn't make me a successful business man. it isn't in me. permit me to muddle along in my own, 'special, wrong-headed way, and the chances are i'll make good in the end. but, once and for all, i refuse positively to give up my trade and try to make sense of wall street methods."
helena moved her shoulders impatiently. for an instant she was silenced. then: "but marriage needn't necessarily put an end to your playwriting. a good marriage—as with venetia—ought even to help, i should think."
"but you persist in forgetting i'm not a fortune hunter."
"but," she countered smartly, "marbridge is."
he said: "oh—marbridge!" as if dumbfounded.
she smiled quietly, a very wise and superior smile.
to this point the car had been steadily ascending; the noise of the motor, together with the frequent stutterings of the exhaust with the muffler cut-out, had been sufficient to disguise the substance of their communication from the ears of the operator. now, however, they surmounted the highest point and began the more gradual descent to the tankerville estate. and with less noise there was consequently very little talking on the part of the two on the rear seat. for which matthias wasn't altogether sorry. he wanted time to think—to think about venetia tankerville in the new light cast upon her by his aunt's concluding remark: as affected by her friendship with vincent marbridge.
in the natural swing of events, it would never have occurred to him to consider marbridge's attentions seriously. nobody ever took marbridge seriously, he believed, aside from a few exceptionally foolish women....
noiselessly the car slipped down a mile-long avenue to the brow of a promontory. on either hand tanglewood's long parked terraces fell away to the water: on the left the harbour of port madison, on the right, long island sound.
matthias was barely conscious of these things; his mood was haunted by an extraordinarily clear vision of vincent marbridge: not tall, but by no means short; a trifle stout, but none the less a well-knit figure of a man, and tremendously alive; dark, with a broad, blunt, good-humoured face and seal-brown eyes that were exceedingly handsome and expressive; keen-witted and accomplished, knowing almost everybody and every place and thing worth knowing; hedonist and egoist, selfish, unscrupulous, magnetic, fascinating.
impressed, matthias frowned. his aunt eyed him covertly, with a sly, semi-affectionate, semi-malicious smile shadowing her mouth.
slackening its pace, the car took the wide semicircle of the drive and slid sedately to a dead stop by the carriage-block. matthias pulled himself together, jumped out, and gave his hand to his aunt. they turned toward the house.
tankerville's pretentious marble palace crowned the brow of the headland with an effect as exquisite as a dream of an ancient french chateau realized in snow. for this its owner had his wife to thank. helena, unable to curb her husband's desire for the most expensive and ostentatious place obtainable, had at least guided his choice of design. it was too magnificent, it was overpowering, but it was beautiful; and it was more than ever beautiful at this hour, with its walls in part bathed in a rose-pink light of sunset, in part shadowed as with a wash of violet, and with all its admirable proportions stark against the dusky sapphire of the sound.
an unwonted stillness clung about the place. matthias wondered.
"it might be the palace of the sleeping beauty," he said. "why this deadly and benumbing silence? what—"
"oh, simply that tankerville decided this morning to take everybody down to huntington for lunch. they got away quite early, in the enchantress. come out on the terrace; we'll look for them."
they passed through a wide, cool, panelled hallway.
"why didn't you go?"
"you know i hate the water. besides, i had a headache—at least, i had one until the enchantress got under way; and furthermore i meant to stay at home and meet you and talk it out."
"venetia went, of course?"
"of course—and marbridge—and everybody!"
he grunted thoughtfully. they descended to a terrace which jutted airily out over the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop of a hundred and fifty feet to the beach.
helena, dropping languidly into a wicker chair, motioned matthias to the broad marble balustrade.
"any sign of the enchantress, o perturbed nephew?"
he lingered there for an instant, marvelling with an inexhaustible wonder at the magnificent sweep of the view, then remembering, raked the waters until he discovered tankerville's power-cruiser standing in toward the dock from the bottle-neck mouth of port madison harbour.
returning, he reported, seated himself near his aunt, lighted a cigarette.
"why did you ask him here anyway?" he demanded abruptly.
"who?" she parried mischievously.
"marbridge, of course," he admitted, sulking in the face of her manifest amusement.
"jealous, jackie?"
"oh—if you insist."
she laughed. "the most encouraging symptom you've yet betrayed!... i didn't ask him. tankerville did. he likes him. the man's amusing, after all."
"but you like him?"
"he amuses me."
"he's not precisely a tame cat...."
"dear boy!" she laughed again, "i didn't fetch you out here to worry about me. i'm fire-proof. venetia's quite another pair of shoes. fret about her as much as you like."
"when does he go—marbridge, i mean?"
"monday, i think. at least, i believe tankerville asked him for a week only."
"and that's why you asked me, this particular week?"
"i thought you'd be a good counter-irritant; and hoped you'd come to your senses and secure venetia against all marbridges for all time to come. you gave me to understand you would."
"pardon," he corrected a trifle stiffly: "i admitted to you in strict confidence that i was in love with venetia. i never promised to ask her to marry me."
"well, that's what i understood you to mean. and anyway, you'd better. neither tankerville nor i can control the girl; she's her own mistress and headstrong enough to be a good match for any matthias that ever lived. if marbridge ever convinces her that she likes him...."
she concluded with an eloquent ellipsis.
"probably," mused matthias after prolonged deliberation, "i'd have lost my head before this if it hadn't been so full of that play."
helena smiled indulgently. "it's not too late ... i hope."
troubled, he rose, walked to the balustrade, jerked his cigarette into space, and returned.
"as between one fortune-hunter and another," he said gloomily, "i'm conceited enough to think myself the safer bet."
his aunt smiled more openly: "see what venetia thinks."
"i will!" said matthias with a fine air of inalterable determination.
