Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905. Various
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could arrange a phrase quite in character, they were in the front of the box, and in the obscurity some one took her hand, and Stephen French’s voice murmured:
“What a piece of luck that I should see you to-night! I have only been in town a few hours, and obeyed my aunt’s summons to the opera as a means of keeping myself from Ben’s house till the morning. You can’t think how eager I have been to see you again, Mrs. Ponsonby.”
There was a strange break in his voice, as if he were trying to restrain the rush of happiness.
All the six mighty artists who made the opera the marvel it was were combining their voices in the closing sextet of the fourth act, and Deena, thrilled by the loveliness of the music and, perhaps, by the surprise of French’s presence, felt she was trembling with excitement.
“Fancy meeting you here!” she kept repeating, the stupid phrase concealing the great joy that was puzzling her conscience.
“What is so wonderful in my being in my aunt’s opera box?” Stephen demanded. “Cannot a professor of zoology like music, or do you object to a bachelor owning an aunt?”
How pleasant it was to hear his kind voice, with its good-natured raillery! But that was sub-conscious pleasure – her immediate attention was busy with the first part of his speech about his aunt’s opera box; she never supposed he had any relations.
“Who is your aunt?” she asked, abruptly.
“Mrs. Star,” he answered. “Don’t you see the family likeness?”
And oddly enough, in the half light, there was a distinct resemblance in the profile of the bewigged old lady to her handsome young kinsman’s. Deena regretted both the likeness and the relationship; it made her uncomfortable to know that Stephen was the nephew of this worldly-minded old lady, with her fictitious standards and her enormous riches; it seemed to place a barrier between them and to lift him out of the simplicity of his college setting.
“Have I become a snob in this Relentless City’?” she exclaimed. “I find my whole idea of you changed by this announcement. It depresses me! You seem to me a different person here, with these affiliations of fashion and grandeur, than when I thought of you simply as Simeon’s friend.”
“Don’t think of me simply as Simeon’s friend,” he pleaded, half in fun, half in sinful earnest.
“I never shall again,” she said, sadly. “Your greatest charm is eclipsed by this luxury – I want you to belong to Harmouth only.”
Stephen’s lips were twitching with suppressed amusement.
“There is a proverb, my dear lady,” he said, “of the pot and the kettle, that you may recall. I am not sure but what I may find a word to say to you upon the cruelty of disturbing associations.”
“To me!” she said, turning to him with the gentle dignity that was her crowning charm. “Surely there are no surprises in me.”
Stephen shook his head in mock disapproval as he allowed his eyes to sweep from the topmost curl of her head to her slipper points, and then he said:
“Go home, Mrs. Ponsonby, and take off that white lace evening dress, and perhaps the wreath of holly might come, too – and that diamond star on your bodice; and put on, instead – let me see – the dark blue frock you wore the evening I told Simeon about the Patagonian expedition, and then you will be in a position to reproach me for any relapse from the simplicity of Harmouth. If you disapprove of me as the nephew of my aunt, how do you suppose I feel about you? And oh! my stars! what would Simeon say?”
“Simeon,” she said, faintly. “You are right; Simeon might not understand – ” and before French had time to protest that he had only been teasing her, the curtain went down, strange men came flocking into the box, Mrs. Star was introducing a Russian grand duke, and Stephen, surrendering his chair, withdrew to the other side of his aunt.
Deena could not but admire the old lady’s admirable manner. She kept up an easy chatter, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, with the Russian and with a Spanish artist; she never allowed Deena to feel out of touch with the conversation, and in the midst of it all she managed to welcome her nephew.
“You are stopping at my house, of course, Stephen? No – at the Savoy? That is uncharitable to a lonely old woman. Where did you know that pretty creature, Mrs. Ponsonby?” she asked, seeing that the two foreigners were absorbing the attention of her beautiful protégée. “You should learn to guard the expression of your face, my dear boy. I begin to understand why you cling so obstinately to Harmouth. I see the place has advantages outside the work of the college.”
Here she wagged her head in self-congratulation at her own astuteness, and Stephen flushed angrily.
“Hush!” he said. “She will hear you. You have little knowledge of Mrs. Ponsonby if you think she would permit the attentions of any man. She is not in the least that kind of person. She is one of the most dignified, self-respecting, high-minded women I ever knew.”
Mrs. Star cut him short with a wave of her fan.
“Spare me the rhapsodies,” she laughed. “You merely mark the stage of the disease you have arrived at. The object of your love sits enthroned! If the husband is wise he will throw his fossils into the sea and come back to look after this pretty possession. Flesh and blood is worth more than dry bones.”
“Ponsonby is a botanist,” Stephen corrected, grimly, while his inward thought was that the dry bones were Simeon’s own; and then, ashamed of the disloyal – though unspoken – sneer, he went back to Deena and began talking volubly of his last letter from her husband.
They had both had letters from Simeon, now safely arrived in the Straits of Magellan. He had written to Deena when they first cast anchor off the Fuegian shore. He described to her the visits of the Indians in their great canoes, containing their entire families and possessions, and the never-dying fire of hemlock on a clay hearth in the middle of the boat; how they would sell their only garment – a fur cloak – for tobacco and rum, and how friendly they seemed to be, in spite of all the stories of cannibalism told by early voyagers.
In the midst of this earnest conversation, Mrs. Star rose to go, escorted by the grand duke, and Stephen, following with Deena, was able to let his enthusiasm rise above a whisper when they gained the corridor.
“Didn’t he tell you that they were all going guanaco hunting?”
“Simeon!” in a tone of incredulity.
“Greatest fun in the world, I am told,” pursued French; “something like stag hunting, only more exciting – done with the bolas. You whirl it round your head and let it fly, and it wraps itself round a beast’s legs and bowls him over before he knows what hit him.”
“Does it kill him?” asked Deena, shrinking from the miseries of the hunted.
“Only knocks him over,” explained Stephen. “You finish him with your knife.”
“Sport is a cruel thing,” she said, shuddering. “I am glad Simeon cannot even ride.”
“Can’t ride!” repeated Stephen. “Indeed, I can tell you he means to. He says the Indians have offered him the best mount they have. They considered him a medicine man, on account of his root-digging propensities, and treated him as the high cockalorum of the whole ship’s company.”
“Surely he is joking,” she said. “Simeon is making game of you.”
“Simeon!” he echoed, mimicking her incredulous tone.
“A joke would be no stranger to him than a horse,” she said, smiling.
They had reached the entrance, and Deena stood shaking with suppressed laughter. “Fancy! Simeon!” she repeated.
“And why not Simeon, pray?” asked Stephen, slightly nettled.
A vision of Simeon with his gold-rimmed spectacles and stooped figure mounted on horseback in the midst of a party of Indians, whirling his bolas over his head and shouting, presented itself to Deena’s imagination. The carriage was waiting,