Page:The American Magazine (1906-1956) - volume 73.pdf/778

756 sion of his face was still that of the man who sees only the mole-hill. Mrs. Martin recognized it with an exasperated sigh. "I’m as sorry now as I can be that I ever offered to take her here. But Mrs. Warburton was in such a fix—having to leave on the instant— and we being sort of related now— and Mr. Warburton having given Phoebe that house— and I didn’t want Phoebe to take Pauline and Frederick— Sylvia and Nancy are enough for her— it just seemed to me as if it was my duty. And now she’s got two weeks longer here. Of course, if you haven’t noticed anything, it’s no use my talking to you,” Mrs. Martin concluded with an audible irritation. “But I was going to ask you if Ernest had said or done anything that showed how he felt towards Pauline.”

Mr. Martin now gave the matter conscientious consideration. ‘‘Why, I should say he didn’t feel at all. Of course, I don’t see them together much.”

“No, she takes him away from the house every chance she gets,” Mrs. Martin interpolated.

“Well, Ernest went in on the train to Boston with Tug and me yesterday. All he talked about was that tramp-trip to Europe he wants to take with Williston and Turner. Lord, no! he’s not thinking of marriage. Why, the moment I realized that I’d got to marry you or die, I went right to work. And let in me tell you, I never worked so hard as that first year with Weldon and Clark. No, Ernest isn’t in love.”

The shade on Mrs. Martin's brow gave a little before a look of flattered reminiscence. She dropped the subject for a while. But by night the shade had returned.

“Why, the minute he appeared,” Mrs. Martin continued, unbosoming herself to Phoebe that evening, “it was as if she got electrified— she became quite a different girl. I'd thought she was a little too dead-and-alive before. Dead-and-alive— I wish you could see her with Ernie when there’s no company in the house. Well, she’s never alone with him if I can help it. I take my sewing and sit right with them. I didn’t mind it at first. It only amused me. But when Ernie began to lose his head— I don’t know why I should be surprised,” Mrs. Martin went on in a mood of extreme self-disgust. “I’ve seen that kind of woman so many times before, I ought to know her on sight. She’s one kind of woman to women and another to men. Why, when she meets a man for the first time, she’s just like a cat sensing a mouse—all ears and paws and cruel excitement.”

Phoebe and her mother were sitting on the piazza of the Martin house. It was an evening in late June, pearl-soft, moon-lighted, rose-perfumed. At one end of the piazza, their backs against the uprights of the big Gloucester hammock, Sylvia talked with Frederick Wright. Sylvia sat concealed except where the moonlight changed the flow of her much-washed and faded organdie skirt to a cascade of splendor. Frederick was in full light.

They all liked Frederick Wright. The responsibilities of his hurried engineering life had made him older in flesh than Tug or Ernest. His outdoor existence had kept him younger in spirit. His face was full of surprising contrasts. Some of his hair had gone, and what remained had turned a crisp gray. The sun had changed his skin to leather. Yet his expression was that of a boy. Again, all the resolution in the world seemed to be compressed between his lips; but no one of their group laughed longer or more easily. And his eyes looked as if they could out-stare the sun; but they were quick-observing and quick-smiling.

These eyes never strayed from Sylvia's face except when Pauline and Ernest promenaded within the circle of vision.

This was often; for Emest, at Pauline’s request, had taken her for a “little stroll” in the garden immediately after dinner. An hour had passed, and they still walked. But Pauline inevitably became the focus of masculine eyes. Now, as she drifted along, she seemed both to sway and to pulsate.

“Would you think she’d dare keep Ernie out there all this time, and you waiting to see him?” Mrs. Martin asked indignantly.

Phoebe did not explain to her mother that Pauline’s social code proclaimed woman's first duty the subjugation of man, woman's first responsibility the entertainment of the unattached male; and that Pauline, with the naiveté of her type, took it for granted that Phoebe’s code was the same as her own. All Phoebe said was: “She certainly is one peach of a pippin!”

“Tf she behaved as well as she looked,” Mrs. Martin said grudgingly, “she’d do very well. Not that she hasn’t lovely ways when men aren’t round,” she added conscientiously.

Pauline had the charming, gracious manner of the finishing-off school. And she was really beautiful. At first, Phoebe and Mrs. Martin had taken a genuine delight in that beauty, a genuine interest in the methods by which it was served and conserved. Pauline