Black is White 19

Black is White 19

He had an impression, as many famous men have, that the sole duty of a

dinner guest is to be funny in the loudest voice possible, drowning out

all competition, and to talk glowingly about the soup, as if nothing

else was required to convince the hostess that he considered her dinner

irreproachable and her cook a jewel. Still, it was agreed Dr Hodder was

a wonderful surgeon.

 

Mrs Desmond and Lydia were there. (This was an excellent opportunity

to entertain them on an occasion of more or less magnitude.) There were

also present Bertie Gunning and his pretty wife, Maisie, both of whom

Yvonne liked; and the Followed sisters, with two middle-aged gentlemen

from one of the clubs.

 

Miss Followed was forty, and proved it by cheerfully discussing events

that happened at least that far back in her life. Her sister Janey

was much younger, quite pretty, and acutely ingenuous. The middle-aged

gentlemen ate very little. They were going to a supper at the

Knickerbocker later on for someone whose name was Lilly. Occasionally it

was Lil. It rather gratified them to be chided about the lady.

 

Frederic, deceived by his father’s sprightly mood, entered rather

recklessly into the lively discussion. He seldom took his eyes from the

face of his beautiful stepmother, and many of his remarks were uttered

_sotto voce_ for her ear alone.

 

Suddenly James Brood called out his name in a sharp, commanding tone.

Frederic, at the moment engaged in a low exchange of words with Yvonne,

did not hear him. Brood spoke again, loudly, harshly. There was dead

silence at the table.

 

“We will excuse you, Frederic,” said he, a deadly calm in his voice. The

puzzled __EXPRESSION__ in the young man’s face slowly gave way to a

steady glare of fury. He could not trust himself to speak. “I regret

exceedingly that you cannot take wine in moderation. A breath of fresh

air will be of benefit to you. You may join us upstairs later on.”

 

“I haven’t drunk a full glass of champagne,” began the young man in

amazed protest.

 

Brood smiled indulgently, but there was a sinister gleam in his gray

eyes. “I think you had better take my advice,” he said.

 

“Very well, sir,” said Frederic in a low, suppressed voice, his face

paling. Without another word he got up from the table and walked out of

the room.

 

He spoke the truth later on when he told Yvonne that he could not

understand. But she understood. She knew that James Brood had endured

the situation as long as it was in his power to endure, and she knew

that it was her fault entirely that poor Frederic had been exposed to

this crowning bit of humiliation.

 

As she sat in the dim study awaiting her stepson’s reappearance with the

two old men, her active, far-seeing mind was striving to estimate the

cost of that tragic clash. Not the cost to herself or to Frederic, but

to James Brood!

 

The Messrs Dawes and Riggs, inordinately pleased over the rehabitation,

were barely through delivering themselves of their protestations of

undying fealty when the sound of voices came up from the lower hall.

Frederic started to leave the room, not caring to face those who had

witnessed his unwarranted degradation. Yvonne hurried to his side.

 

“Where are you going?” she cried sharply.

 

“You cannot expect me to stay here----”

 

“But certainly!” she exclaimed. “Listen! I will tell you what to do.”

 

Her voice sank to an imperative whisper. He listened in sheer amazement,

his face growing dark with rebellion as she proceeded to unfold her plan

for a present victory over his father.

 

“No, no! I can’t do that! Never, Yvonne,” he protested.

 

“For my sake, Freddy. Don’t forget that you owe something to me. I

command you to do as I tell you. It is the only way. Make haste! Open

the window, get the breath of air he prescribed, and when they are all

here, _apologise for your condition!_”

 

When Dr Hodder and Mrs Gunning entered the room a few minutes later

young Brood was standing in the open window, drinking in the cold night

air, and she was blithely regaling the blinking old men with an account

of her stepson’s unhappy efforts to drink all the wine in sight! As she

told it, it was a most amusing experiment.

 

James Brood was the last to enter, with Miss Followed. He took in the

situation at a glance. Was it relief that sprang into his eyes as he

saw the two old men?

 

Frederic came down from the window, somewhat too swiftly for one who is

moved by shame and contrition, and faced the group with a well-assumed

look of mortification in his pale, twitching face. He spoke in low,

repressed tones, but not once did he permit his gaze to encounter that

of his father.

 

“I’m awfully sorry to have made a nuisance of myself. It does go to my

head, and I--I dare say the heat of the room helped to do the work. I’m

all right now, however. The fresh air did me a lot of good. Hope you’ll

all overlook my foolish attempt to be a devil of a fellow.” He hesitated

a moment and then went on, more clearly. “I’m all right now, father. It

shall not happen again, I can promise you that.”

 

A close observer might have seen the muscles of his jaw harden as he

uttered the final sentence. He intended that his father should take it

as a threat, not as an apology.

 

Brood was watching him closely, a puzzled __EXPRESSION__ in his eyes;

gradually it developed into something like admiration. In the clamour of

voices that ensued the older man detected the presence of an underlying

note of censure for his own behaviour. For the first time in many years

he experienced a feeling of shame.

 

Someone was speaking at his elbow. Janey Followell, in her young,

enthusiastic voice, shrilled something into his ear that caused him to

look at her in utter amazement. It was so astounding that he could not

believe he heard aright. He mumbled in a questioning tone, “I beg your

pardon,” and she repeated her remark.

 

“How wonderfully like you Frederic is, Mr Brood.” Then she added: “Do

you know, I’ve never noticed it until to-night? It’s really remarkable.”

 

“Indeed,” Brood responded somewhat icily.

 

“Don’t you think so, Mr Brood?”

 

“No, I do not, Miss Janey,” said he distinctly.

 

“Maisie Gunning was speaking of it just a few minutes ago,” went on

the girl, unimpressed. “She says you are very much alike when you

are--are------” here she foundered in sudden confusion.

 

“Intoxicated?” he inquired, without a smile.

 

She blushed painfully. “No, no! When you are angry. There, I suppose I

shouldn’t have said it, but------”

 

“It is a most gratifying discovery,” said he, and turned to speak to

Mrs Desmond. He did not take his gaze from Frederic’s white, set face,

however; and, despite the fact that he knew the girl had uttered an idle

commonplace, he was annoyed to find himself studying the features of

Matilde’s boy with an interest that seemed almost laughable when he

considered it later on.

 

His guests found much to talk about in the room. He was soon being

dragged from one object to another and ordered to reveal the history,

the use, and the nature of countless things that obviously were intended

to be just what they seemed; such as rugs, shields, lamps, and so forth.

He was ably assisted by Messrs Riggs and Dawes, who lied prodigiously in

a frenzy of rivalry.

 

“What a perfectly delightful Buddha!” cried Miss Janey, stopping in

front of the idol. “How perfectly lovely he is--or is it a she, Mr

Brood?”

 

He did not reply at once. His eyes were on Frederic and Yvonne, who had

come together at last and were conversing earnestly apart from the rest

of the group. He observed that Lydia was standing quite alone near the

table, idly handling a magazine. To the best of his recollection,

Frederic had scarcely spoken to the girl during the evening.

 

“This is where I work and play and dream, Miss Janey, and practise the

ogre’s art. It is a forbidden chamber, my sanctuary,”--with a glance at

the idol--“and here is where I sometimes chop off pretty young women’s

heads and hang them from the window-ledge as a warning to all other

birds of prey.”

 

Miss Janey laughed gleefully, attracting Yvonne’s attention. Then she

sang out across the room:

 

“Your husband says he is an ogre. Is he?”

 

Yvonne came languidly toward them.

 

“My husband manages to keep me in his enchanted castle without chains

and padlocks, and that is saying a great deal in this day and age, my

dear. Would you call him an ogre after that?”

 

“Perhaps it is the old story of the fairy queen and the ogre.”

 

“You may be sure I’d be an ogre if there was no other way of keeping

you, my dear,” said Brood. There was something in his voice that caused

her to look up into his face quickly.

 

Dr Hodder, being a wonderful surgeon, managed to cut his finger with

a razor-edged kris at that instant, drawing a little shriek from Miss

Followed, to whom he was jocularly explaining that scientific Malays

used the thing in removing one another’s appendices, the surgeon being

the one who survived the operation.

 

During the excitement incident to the bloodletting the middle-aged

gentlemen glanced furtively at their watches and indulged in a mental

calculation from which they emerged somewhat easier in their minds. It

still wanted an hour before the theatres were out.