Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/378

352 that Ware was really a personage, in his way. "But he ought to stand on his own legs," he thought. He said to himself that sometime he would observe the Ware situation at first hand. "But I wish they didn't live so confoundedly far out of town!" Still, he would call some day. However, the day was still deferred, and before it came he met his old charmer at Mrs. Strong's. There she was, the same erect, slender creature, with beautiful, interested eyes that looked out with eager seriousness from under her soft gray hair; her mouth, a little cold, was large and beautifully cut; there was still a faint color in her cheek. She was, of course, not young, and yet one's first impression was of youth; perhaps because of a certain gayety of carriage and a buoyant movement of her head; but, most of all, because of the extraordinary interest of her glance.

"Why, Henry Austin!" she said, holding out her two hands, as eagerly impulsive as a girl. "Why, this is perfectly delightful!" In her pleasure she did not release his hand for a moment, but stood holding it in both of hers, smiling, with candid eyes, and saying again, "This is charming, dear Mr. Austin!"

There was such a beautiful friendliness in this honest hand-clasp, that suddenly the gray-haired man was conscious of his scars. After that they sat down on the yellow sofa by the fire and talked—or rather, he talked; that was the power of the creature!—a gentle, lovely power of making people interested because they talked about themselves. He told her—Heaven knows what he did not tell her!—of the death of a relative which had called him back to America; of his affairs; of his health, even; of those pleasant, trivial European experiences. Nothing great, nothing tragic, nothing noble; just the pleasant, harmless experiences of a pleasant, harmless man. And then her eye hardened and her mouth grew grave.

"And have you written your book?"

"My book?" he said, a little blankly, and then laughed the pleasant laugh of the person who is believed in. "Oh yes; you always said I would write a book!"

"I said you could," she corrected him, coldly; "not you would. You are lazy, you know."

He felt himself grow hot at the roots of his hair at the compliment of her displeasure and confidence. He was suddenly ashamed of all his easy years, in which the purpose of achievement had gradually dried up and blown away. And the scars stung a little.

"I had nothing to write about," he said, easily jocose.

"Yes, you had," she said, calmly.

And then somebody came up to speak to her, and Henry Austin watched her as she moved about, always with that young air of buoyant expectation. Yes, a charmer and a creator Look at the girl with the voice, and the painter-man, and—Harris! He wondered if she wore one of Harris's dresses. It was a mighty handsome dress anyhow; even to his untutored male eye it was handsome. She plainly had plenty of money now. The son-in-law's success meant ease and even wealth to his household, and she was a part of his household. It came over Austin, with a ludicrous sense of his own fatuousness, that he had not said a word about that household, nor the son-in-law, nor little Dora, nor the baby! She had made him talk so much about himself that he never thought of her. And the scars stung a good deal.

"I'm an old fool," he said to himself, smiling. "But that is the secret of it—her charm is that she makes us find ourselves charming. Well, I must go and see little Dora."

The very next day he went.

"Yes, Mrs. Ware was at home," the man said, "but Mrs. Wharton was not receiving. Would he come this way?" Henry Austin went that way, and found himself in a pleasant room, with a chuckling wood-fire on the hearth. On a round table full of books, there was a green bowl of violets, and a prickly bronze dragon, supporting on his scaly coils the great blue and white vase of the shaded lamp; near by, sunk in a deep chair, a girl, trying to read, was keeping a delicate, detaining hand on a little being in white, who was tumbling about on her lap, and snatching at the book, and laughing and gurgling, and being told to keep still—"mother's precious!" The girl looked up, a little blindly, narrowing her near-sighted brown eyes, and the child, instantly stern and suspicious, subsided on her shoulder.