Lucy was still to Eloise Harper the stenographer of Frederick Towne. Out of place, of course, in this fine country house, with its formal gardens, its great stables, its retinue of servants. “What do you do with yourselves?” she asked her hostess, as she came down, ready for dinner, in revealing apricot draperies and found Lucy crisp in white organdie with a band of black velvet around her throat.
“Do?” Lucy’s smile was ingenuous. “We are very busy, Del and I. We feed the pigs.”
“Pigs?” Eloise stared. She had assumed that a girl of Lucy’s type would affect an elaborate attitude of leisure. And here she was, instead, fashionably energetic.
They fed the pigs, it seemed, actually. “Of course not the big ones. But the little ones have their bottles. There are ten and their mother died. You should see Del and me. He carries the bottle in a metal holder—round,”—Lucy’s hand described the shape,—“and when they see him coming they all squeal, and it’s adorable.”
Lucy’s air was demure. She was very happy.[317] She was a woman of strong spirit. Already she had interested her weak husband beyond anything he had ever known in his drifting days of bachelorhood. “After dinner,” she told Eloise, “I’ll show you Del’s roses. They are quite marvellous. I think his collection will be beyond anything in this part of the country.”
Delafield, coming up, said, “They are Lucy’s roses, but she says I am to do the work.”
“But why not have a gardener?” Eloise demanded.
“Oh, we have. But I should hate to have our garden a mere matter of—mechanics. Del has some splendid ideas. We are going to work for the flower shows. Prizes and all that.”
Delafield purred like a pussy-cat. “I shall name my first rose the ‘Little Lucy Logan.’”
Edith, locking arms with Jane, a little later, as they strolled under a wisteria-hung trellis towards the fountain, said, “Lucy’s making a man of him because she loves him. And I would have laughed at him. We would have bored each other to death.”
“They will never be bored,” Jane decided, “with their roses and their little pigs.”
They had reached the fountain. It was an old-fashioned one, with thin streams of water spouting up from the bill of a bronzed crane. There were goldfish in the pool, and a big green frog leaped from a lily pad. Beyond the fountain the wisteria roofed a path of pale light. A peacock walked[318] slowly towards them, its long tail sweeping the ground in burnished beauty.
“Think of this,” said Jane, “and Lucy’s days at the office.”
“And yet,” Edith pondered, “she told me if he had not had a penny she would have been happy with him.”
“I believe it. With a cottage, one pig, and a rose-bush, they would find bliss. It is like that with them.”
The two women sat down on the marble coping of the fountain. The peacock trailed by them, its jewels all ablaze under the sun.
“That peacock makes me think of Adelaide.” Edith swept her hand through the water, scaring the little fishes.
“Why?”
“In that dress she had on to-night—bronze and blue and green tulle. I will say this for Adelaide, she knows how to dress.”
“Does she ever think of anything else but clothes?”
“Men,” succinctly.
“Oh.”
“Women like Adelaide,” Edith elucidated, “want to look well, and to be admired. They live for it. They wake up in the morning and go to bed with that one idea. And the men fall for it.”
“Do they?”
“Yes. Adelaide knows how to play on the keys[319] of their vanity. You and I don’t—or won’t. When our youth goes, Jane, we’ll have to be loved for our virtues. Adelaide will be loved for the part she plays, and she plays it well.”
She laughed and stood up. “I am afraid your announcement to-morrow will hurt her feelings, Jane.”
“She knows,” Jane said quietly. “Mr. Towne told her.”
“Really?” Edith stopped, and went on in a lower tone, “Speaking of angels—here she comes.”
Adelaide, in her burnished tulle, tall, slender, graceful as a willow, was swinging along beneath the trellis. The peacock had turned and walked beside her. “What a picture Baldy could make of that,” Edith said, “‘The Proud Lady.’”
“Do you know,” Jane’s voice was also lowered, “when I look at her, I feel that it is she who should marry your uncle.”
Edith was frank. “I should hate her. And so would he in a month. She’s artificial, and you are so adorably natural, Jane.”
Adelaide had reached the circle of light that surrounded the fountain. “The men have come and have gone up to dress,” she said. “All except your uncle, Edith. He telephoned that he can’t get here until after dinner. He has an important conference.”
“He said he might be late. Benny came, of course?”
[320]“Yes, and Eloise is happy. He had brought her all the town gossip. That’s why I left. I hate gossip.”
Edith knew that pose. No one could talk more devastatingly than Adelaide of her neighbor’s affairs. But she did it, subtly, with an effect of charity. “I am very fond of her,” was her way of prefacing a ruthless revelation.
“I thought your brother would be down,” Adelaide looked at Jane, poised on the rim of the fountain, like a blue butterfly,—“but he wasn’t with the rest.”
“Baldy can’t be here until to-morrow noon. He had to be in the office.”
“What are you going to do with yourself in the meantime, Edith?” Adelaide was in a mood to make people uncomfortable. She was uncomfortable herself. Jane, in billowing heavenly blue with rose ribbons floating at her girdle, was youth incarnate. And it was her youth that had attracted Towne.
The three women walked towards the house together. As they came out from under the arbor, they were aware of black clouds stretched across the horizon. “I hope it won’t rain,” Edith said. “Lucy is planning to serve dinner on the terrace.”
Adelaide was irritable. “I wish she wouldn’t. There’ll be bugs and things.”
Jane liked the idea of an out-of-door dinner. She thought that the maids in their pink linen were like[321] rose-leaves blown across the lawn. There was a great umbrella over the table, rose-striped. “How gay it is,” she said; “I hope the rain won’t spoil it.”
When they reached the wide-pillared piazza, no one was there. The wind was blowing steadily from the bank of clouds. Edith went in to get a sc............