The Transgression of Andrew Vane: A Novel. Carryl Guy Wetmore
saucers; and, as he passed, he had a glimpse of several well-groomed men, in white waistcoats and gaiters, sitting on the extreme edges of their chairs, with their toes turned in, their elbows on their knees, and tea-cups in their hands; and smartly-dressed women, with big hats, and their veils tucked up across their noses, nibbling at petits fours. He turned into his study with a feeling of satisfaction. It was incomprehensible to his mind, this seemingly universal passion for tea and sweet cakes; but if the institution was to exist under his roof at all, it was gratifying to know that, albeit the tea was the finest Indian overland, and the sweet cakes from the Maison Gagé, it was not for these reasons alone that the 16th Arrondissement was eager, and the 7th not loath, to be received at the hôtel in the Villa Dupont. Jeremy knew that his wife was the most popular woman in the Colony, as to him she was the best and most beautiful in the world. Before he touched the Temps or the half-dozen letters which lay upon his table, he leaned forward, with his elbows on the silver-mounted blotter, and his temples in his hands, and looked long at her photograph smiling at him out of its Russian enamel frame. If the world, which laughed at him for his prim black neckties and his common-sense shoes, even while it respected him for his business ability, had seen him thus, it would have shared his wife's knowledge that Jeremy Carnby was an uncommonly good sort.
He opened his letters carefully, slitting the envelopes with a slender paper-knife, and endorsing each one methodically with the date of receipt before passing on to the next. All were private and personal, his voluminous business mail being handled at his office by a secretary and two stenographers. With characteristic loyalty, Jeremy wrote regularly to a score of old acquaintances and poor relations in the States, most of whom he had seen but once or twice in the twenty-five years of his exile, and read their replies with interest, often with emotion: and his own left hand knew not how many cheques had been signed, and cheering words written, by his unassuming right, in reply to the plaints and appeals of his intimates of former years. For the steady, white light of Jeremy Carnby's kindliness let never a glint of its brightness pass through the closely-woven bushel of his modesty.
He hesitated with the last letter in his hand, reread it slowly, and then lit a cigar and sat looking fixedly at his inkstand, blowing out thin coils of smoke. So Mrs. Carnby found him, as she swept in, dropped into a big red-leather arm-chair, and slid smoothly into an especial variety of small talk, wherewith she was wont to smooth the business wrinkles from his forehead, and bring him into a frame of mind proper to an appreciation of the efforts of their chef.
"If it isn't smoking a cigar at fifteen minutes before the dinner-hour!" she began, with an assumption of indignation. "Really, Jeremy, you're getting quite revolutionary in your ways. I think I shall tell Armand that hereafter we shall begin dinner with coffee, have salad with the Rüdesheimer, and take our soup in the conservatory."
Mr. Carnby laid down his cigar.
"I lit it absent-mindedly," he answered. "Have they gone?"
"No, of course not, stupid!" retorted his wife. "They're all out there. I told them to wait until we'd finished dinner. Now, Jeremy! why will you ask such questions?"
"It was stupid of me," he admitted.
"And to punish you, I shall tell you who they were," announced Mrs. Carnby. "I might do worse and tell you all they said. You're so – so comfortable, Jeremy. When I'm on the point of boiling over because of the inanities of society I can always come in here and open my safety-valve, and you don't care a particle, do you, if I fill your study full of conversational steam?"
Jeremy smiled pleasantly.
"You nice person!" added his wife. "Well, here goes. First, there was that stupid Mrs. Maitland. She told me all about her portrait. It seems Benjamin-Constant is painting it – and I thought the others would never come. Finally, however, they did – the Villemot girls and Mrs. Sidney Kane, and a few men – Daulas and De Bousac and Gerald Kennedy and that insufferable little Lister man. Then Madame Palffy. It makes me furious every time I hear her called 'madame.' The creature was born in Worcester – and do you know, Jeremy, I'm positive she buys her gowns at an upholsterer's? No mere dressmaker could lend her that striking resemblance to a sofa, which is growing stronger every day! Her French is too impossible. She was telling Daulas about something that never happened to her on her way out to their country place, and I heard her say 'compartiment de dames soûles' quite distinctly. I can't imagine how she contrives to know so many things that aren't so. One would suppose she'd stumble over a real, live fact now and again, if only by accident. And her husband's no better. Trying to find the truth in one of his stories severely taxes one's aptitude in long division. I saw him at the Hatzfeldts' musicale night before last. Pazzini was playing, and Palffy was sound asleep in a corner, after three glasses of punch. I really felt sorry that a man with such a wife should be missing something attractive, and I was going to poke him surreptitiously with my fan, but Tom Radwalader said, 'Better let the lying dog sleep!' He positively is amusing, that Radwalader man!"
Mrs. Carnby looked up at her husband for the admiring smile which was the usual guarantee that she had amused him, but only to find Jeremy's eyes once more riveted upon the inkstand, and the cigar between his thin lips again.
"My dear Jeremy," she said, "I'm convinced that you've not heard one syllable of my carefully prepared discourse."
"My dear Louisa," responded Mr. Carnby with unwonted readiness, "I'm convinced that I have not. The truth of the matter is," he added apologetically, "that I've received an unusual letter."
"It must indeed be unusual if it can cause you to ignore my conversation," said Louisa Carnby.
"That is perfectly true," said Jeremy with conviction.
His wife rose, came over to his side, and kissed him on the tip of his nose.
"Good my lord," she said, "I think I like your tranquil endorsement of the compliments I make for myself better than those which other men invent out of their own silly heads! Am I to know what is in your unusual letter?"
"Why not?" asked Jeremy seriously.
"Why not, indeed?" said Mrs. Carnby. "I have taken you for better or worse. There's so little 'worse' about the contract, Jeremy, that I stand ready to accept such as there is in a willing spirit, even when it comes in the form of a dull letter."
Jeremy looked up at her with his familiar smile.
"Louisa," he said, "if I were twenty years of age, I should ask nothing better than the chance to marry you again."
"Man! but thou'rt the cozener!" exclaimed Mrs. Carnby. "Thou'dst fair turn the head of a puir lassis. There – that'll do. Go on with your letter!"
"It's from Andrew Sterling," said Jeremy. "You'll remember him, I think, in Boston. He was a friend of my father's, and kept a friendly eye on me after the old gentleman's death. We've always corresponded, more or less regularly, and now he writes to say – but perhaps I'd best read you that part of his letter."
"Undoubtedly," put in his wife. "That is, if you can. People write so badly, nowadays."
"Um – um – " mumbled Jeremy, skipping the introductory sentences. "Ah! Here we have it. Mr. Sterling says: 'Now for the main purpose of this letter. My poor daughter's only son, Andrew Sterling Vane, is sailing to-day on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. He has been obliged to leave Harvard, as his health is not robust, and I have thought that perhaps the sea-voyage and some months in Paris might put him in shape – '"
"Good Lord!" broke in Mrs. Carnby. "Imagine some months in Paris by way of rest-cure!"
"'And so,'" continued Jeremy, "'I'm sending him over, in hopes that the change may be of benefit. He is a singular lad – sensitive in the extreme, and utterly inexperienced – and I am going to ask if, "for auld lang syne," you will be so good as to make him welcome. I don't mean, of course, that I expect you to exercise any sort of supervision. The boy must take care of himself, like all of us, but I would like to feel that, in a strange city, there is one place where he may find a hint of home."
Jeremy paused.
"Go on!" observed Mrs. Carnby.
"There is really nothing more of importance," said her husband, "except that I've also