F I had a hundred daughters,” said Mrs. Collingsworth, “I should want each of them to be her own self and to follow out her own character. I myself did. Perhaps that accounts for many things.”
I wondered if it could account for the kiss—the two kisses—which her daughter had given me, an uninvited stranger, at her threshold a few minutes before. I wondered if it could account for her daughter's unbelievably capricious conduct—her gayety—in receiving Jimmy Blandsford an instant later. A hot, male anger filled my soul, even as I stifled the horrid question whether she had kissed him too, whether indeed such was a household custom with this extraordinary family.
My hostess herself was an extraordinary person. Even a woman's envious estimate would not have placed her age above forty, and she looked rather thirty as she sat now, in evening dress, surrounded by all the belongings of her patrician home. There was type, family, “quality” here. The thoroughbred, time out of mind, has been licensed to occasional eccentricity. I had found myself hanging on her next remark, even as I heard through the open door the gay laughter of Suzanne, and the voice of Jimmy Blandsford, booming buoyantly.
Surely I had been set at ease with perfect breeding, perfect grace. No opportunity had been given me to stumble or blunder, to make myself unhappy by attempting to explain my presence. I was accepted as if I were an old friend. My heart went out to so fine a hostess. Indeed I was willing, there and then, to cast the full vote of the electoral college for her as my mother-in-law.
She must have touched some button, for the old negro man, silent and impassive, appeared with coffee and cigarettes.
“The young people are going to hear 'Thaïs' tonight,” she remarked. “Would you rather go? I think there would be room in our box.”
I made apologies now for my intrusion, began to stammer would have excused myself. But she would have none of that.
“If only you could sit here and talk to an old lady instead!” She smiled. “'Thaïs' bores me. I only thought you might like to run down for an hour or so.”
“Thaïs” indeed! Was Thaïs herself of old, or any light o' love of all the world, more fickle or more condemnable than she whose joyous laughter now came to me? Sit near her, the strong cordial of her kiss in all my veins, and watch her talk to Jimmy Blandsford, accepted openly as guest in the Collingsworth box? No, I could not—not even for the sight of her beauty thus close at hand. Wretched, I remained mute, I suppose, or at least inarticulate.
“There will be two other ladies in the box tonight. They will for chaperons. Then you'll humor me and sit here for a time, Major?”
I heard her voice, reassuring, a perfect index of her exquisite tact. I wondered how much she knew, how much she guessed, how much she understood.
I heard the front door open. Suzanne and her escort passed, outbound for “Thaïs,” both talking at once, very happily.
“It is so nice of you to stay, Major. It was so nice of you come.”
In her delicate upward inflection I caught her indication of cue.
“My dear Mrs. Collingsworth, you are simply splendid!” I broke out. “You allow me, a stranger—”
“Oh, not at all a stranger, not in the least. Haven't you been a friend to my daughter—when she was hurt? Haven't we heard you speak, and sing, and everything? And doesn't everyone know Major Murrell Cardon?”
I fancy I colored.
“But where has Major Cardon been, the last month or so? Until just the other day, when you sang—do you know,”—she smiled suddenly—“I don't usually much care for men who sing, but you sang so badly I rather fancied you, because I fancied you didn't fancy yourself! So many amateurs do.”
When I told her I had been in hospital, told her why, necessarily, explanations began to pend between us.
“Mrs. Collingsworth,” I began again impetuously, “you are Southern, you are Kentuckian. You ride as your daughter does?”
She nodded. “Of course.'
“There are two ways of riding, Mrs. Collingsworth. One is safe, perhaps wise. If the rails look too stiff, one can follow down the road and find a gate. The other way is to ride straight across.”
Her lips parted in a little smile. “I always did,” she said simply.
“And I also. I know no other way.”
“Yes. Then?”
“Yes! That is why I am here. That is why I went to the hospital—that I might be fit to come here. And that is why I came tonight. Can you understand?”
“I suppose it was Suzanne,” she said at length gravely. For an instant a dimple showed in her left cheek—the same dimple I had seen on the left cheek of Suzanne.